[netCDF #VQZ-726653]: data packing

Hi Sue,

Yikes!  You are absolutely right!  I was skeptical this could be
wrong, because it was copied from our "Best Practices" page at

  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/docs/BestPractices.html

and no one else ever noticed or reported that the formula for
scale_factor was wrong.  It was in our 2006 Workshop pages, as you
noticed, and also in our 2007 Workshop:

  
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/workshops/2007/bestpractices/Packing.html

I've corrected it in all three places and included a note that the
previous formula was incorrect.  I just hope no one has converted the
wrong formula into code, since not every developer is as careful as
you are to check for reasonableness!  Now I will probably have
nightmares about the wrong formula being used in climate models,
producing results that are later found to be completely wrong, causing
us to miss the obvious forecasts of Global Cooling ... :-)

Anyway, your name is now added to the NetCDF Credits page at

  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/credits.html

It's the least we could do.  Thanks for taking the trouble to report
the problem so convincingly.

--Russ

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



Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: VQZ-726653
Department: Support netCDF
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed