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Jason, With 3.6 it is possible to have multiple variables all with sizes larger than 4 GiB, as long as they all use the record dimension, and each has no more than 4 GiB per record. When you create the file, you have to use a flag to the nc_create or nf90_create call to specify use of the 64-bit offset variant of the file format, as described in the documentation or in this FAQ: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/docs/faq.html#Large%20File%20Support8 So, for example, this is a possible structure for a netCDF file using version 3.6 netcdf large_vars { dimensions: k=unlimited; m=31700; n=31700; t=1; variables: float var1(k,t,m,n); // over 4 GB for each value of k float var2(k,t,m,n); // over 4 GB for each value of k float var3(k,t,m,n); // ... } If time will always be 1, there may be no need to use it as the unlimited dimension. So if you could make one of your spatial dimensions the unlimited dimension, whichever is most slowly varying, then you could store multiple variables of very large size, as long as the space for each variable in each record didn't exceed the limit of 2**32-4 values. --Russ Russ Rew UCAR Unidata Program address@hidden http://www.unidata.ucar.edu Ticket Details =================== Ticket ID: YTY-788071 Department: Support netCDF Priority: Normal Status: Closed