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Hi, Using the "ncdump" utility program that is part of the freely available netCDF software shows that the precipitation is in a 3D variable: float precip(time, lat, lon) ; precip:long_name = "Average Monthly Rate of Precipitation" ; precip:valid_range = 0.f, 70.f ; precip:units = "mm/day" ; precip:add_offset = 0.f ; where the sizes of the dimensions are: lon = 144 ; lat = 72 ; time = UNLIMITED ; // (12 currently) So one way to extract the values as comma-separated values is to use the ncdump utility, specifying just the precip variable, which produces text output: $ ncdump -bf -v precip precip.mon.ltm.nc ... precip = // precip(1-144 ,1,1) 0.2890909, 0.2954545, 0.2918182, 0.29, 0.2886364, 0.2890909, 0.2886364, 0.2872727, 0.2890909, 0.2913636, 0.2895454, 0.2895454, 0.2913636, ... 0.3122727, 0.3072727, 0.2940909, // precip(1-144 ,2,1) 0.3104545, 0.345, 0.3609091, 0.3836364, 0.4081818, 0.4336364, 0.4581818, 0.4831818, 0.4990909, 0.5077273, 0.5090909, 0.5013636, 0.49, 0.475, ... and so on, where I've omitted some of the output. The "// ..." lines are comments to help navigate through the output, but will only appear if the "-bf" option for "brief annotation using Fortran indexing" is specified for ncdump. To import data in this form into Excel should not be too difficult, but may require a little massaging with a scripting language such as awk, perl, python, or ruby. Another approach would be to read the data into MATLAB (or IDL or Octave or some package that can read netCDF data) and export the data specifically for Excel or as comma-delimited text. A large list of software packages (most freely available) that can read netCDF data is maintained here: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/software.html Here's some other methods for examining netCDF files and getting the data into Excel: http://www.bodc.ac.uk/data/online_delivery/international_sea_level/woce_netcdf.html#seven You could even use Excel directly with an OPeNDAP (DODS) data server that serves netCDF data, since Excel can read from URLs and you can specify a netCDF query to such a data server with a URL. Details to that approach are here: http://www.opendap.org/faq/useExcel.html There is also a freely available application called the OPeNDAP Data Connector (ODC) that can import remote netCDF data: http://www.opendap.org/ODC/ I hope this helps ... --Russ Russ Rew UCAR Unidata Program address@hidden http://www.unidata.ucar.edu Ticket Details =================== Ticket ID: SCT-388171 Department: Support netCDF Priority: Normal Status: Closed