[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[netCDF #HLH-716928]: NetCDF download

This archive contains answers to questions sent to Unidata support through mid-2025. Note that the archive is no longer being updated. We provide the archive for reference; many of the answers presented here remain technically correct, even if somewhat outdated. For the most up-to-date information on the use of NSF Unidata software and data services, please consult the Software Documentation first.

  • Subject: [netCDF #HLH-716928]: NetCDF download
  • Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:51:00 -0600
Adela,

NetCDF is not really a tool, it's a software package that includes a
set of programming libraries for developers of data access and
visualization applications.  It also contains two simple command-line
tools, ncdump and ncgen, that can be used to convert between the
netCDF data format and a text-based format (CDL) for representing the
same information.  For small datasets, it is practical to use ncdump
to convert the data to CDL, then edit the CDL in a text editor, then
convert back to netCDF using the ncgen tool.

To manipulate netCDF data in Matlab, I think it would be better to use
third-party software that allows reading and writing netCDF directly
from Matlab.  Several freely-available software packages that
implement a MATLAB/netCDF interface are available: NetCDF Toolbox for
MATLAB-5, MexEPS, the CSIRO MATLAB/netCDF interface, NetCDF reader,
and fanmat.  Links to more information about thes packages are here:

  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/software.html#MATLAB

It is also possible to make use of Java interfaces from Matlab, in
which case the netCDF Java library might be useful.  However many of
these tools were designed with geosciences applications in mind, so
may not be directly applicable to your discipline.

There's not much available for converting general netCDF data into
something usable in Excel, although this has been done for particular
kinds of data, as you can see by Googling "netcdf excel".  Depending
on what your data looks like, it may be relatively easy to take the
output from ncdump and run it through an awk, perl, or python script
to get comma-separated values for import into Excel.

For your purposes, I think you may want something more customized to
the use of analytical instruments and chromatography data.  I don't
know much about this area, but here's what I found:

  http://www.biomechanic.org/comspari/  (see the cdf2ascii program)
  http://web.chemistry.gatech.edu/~bostwick/stms/netcdf.txt
  http://bioconductor.org/packages/2.0/bioc/html/xcms.html
  https://ftirsearch.com/features/converter_list.htm
  http://www.johankool.nl/software/

--Russ

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



Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: HLH-716928
Department: Support netCDF
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed