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[netCDF #QTX-782575]: linking satellite data with info in a netCDF file

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  • Subject: [netCDF #QTX-782575]: linking satellite data with info in a netCDF file
  • Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 12:23:04 -0600
Hi Susi,

As far as I know there is no existing tool to do what you want, but you may be 
able to use a combination of tools or some programming.  You can use the ncdump 
tool to just get a text version of the data in the netCDF file. 

It sounds like you may be wanting to get the data imported into a spreadsheet.  
You might be able to write a perl (or awk or python or ruby) script to convert 
the ncdump output, which already includes comma-delimited lists of values, into 
something Excel can import.

Look also at the tool ncks, which is part of the NetCDF Operators (NCO) 
package.  According to the NCO User's Guide:

  ncks will print netCDF data in ASCII format to stdout, like ncdump, but with 
these differences: ncks prints data in a tabular format intended to be easy to 
search for the data you want, one datum per screen line, with all dimension 
subscripts and coordinate values (if any) preceding the datum. Option `-s' (or 
long options `--sng_fmt' and `--string') lets the user format the data using 
C-style format strings.

  Options `-a', `-F' , `-H', `-M', `-m', `-P', `-Q', `-q', `-s', and `-u' (and 
their long option counterparts) control the formatted appearance of the data. 

Alternatively, you might be able to read the data into MATLAB (or IDL or ArcGIS 
9.2 some similar commercial package) and see if there is a way to export the 
data for Excel or as comma-delimited text. Many other software packages can 
read netCDF data, and lots of them are freely available:
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/software.html

The way most users solve problems like this is by writing small data processing 
applications, using a language they are familiar with that has a netCDF 
interface.  There are some complete examples programs that read netCDF data 
from C, C++, Java, Fortran-77, Fortran-90, python, Matlab, perl, and IDL here:
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/examples/programs/

--Russ


  
Russ Rew                                         UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                     http://www.unidata.ucar.edu



Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: QTX-782575
Department: Support netCDF
Priority: Critical
Status: Closed