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Hi, > This is Seungwoo Jason Chang who is a pH.D student of University of > Florida. I downloaded the NetCDF data in this website > (http://geoport-dev.whoi.edu/thredds/ncss/grid/prism4/monthly/dataset.html), > but I can't find the any directions about the data. For example, in my > downloaded file, time variable varies like 13194 > 13225 13253 13284 13314 13345 13375 13406 13437 13467 ... . Is there > any direction to figure out the meaning of these values or standard? > > I asked Gibson who is the creator of these data > (http://geoport-dev.whoi.edu/thredds/prism4.html?dataset=prism4/monthly), > but he said the data was converted in your website, so he has no idea > about it. > > Appreciate if you could explain to me this or give some contacts I can > ask. According to the "Gridded Dataset Description", which is a link you can click on, the time coordinate is defined as follows: <axis name="time" shape="1403" type="float" axisType="Time"> <attribute name="units" value="days since 1858-11-17 00:00:00"/> <attribute name="_ChunkSize" type="int" value="1"/> <attribute name="_CoordinateAxisType" value="Time"/> <values> 13194.0 13225.0 13253.0 13284.0 13314.0 13345.0 13375.0 13406.0 13437.0 13467.0 13498.0 13528.0 13559.0 13590.0 13619.0 13650.0 13680.0 13711.0 13741.0 13772.0 ... so the units are days since 1858-11-17 00:00:00". You can convert this to a date/time using various libraries, but here is a way using the netCDF utilities ncgen and ncdump. First create a netCDF CDL file, "days.cdl" for example, which is just an ASCII file that could look like this: netcdf days { dimensions: time = UNLIMITED ; // (20 currently) variables: float time(time) ; time:units = "days since 1858-11-17 00:00:00" ; data: time = 13194, 13225, 13253, 13284, 13314, 13345, 13375, 13406, 13437, 13467, 13498, 13528, 13559, 13590, 13619, 13650, 13680, 13711, 13741, 13772 ; } Then use ncgen to make a binary netCDF file, "days.nc" out of days.cdl, like this: $ ncgen -b days.cdl Finally, dump that out with ncdump using the "-t" option to translate times to a human-readable form, like this: $ ncdump -t days.nc for which the output is: netcdf days { dimensions: time = UNLIMITED ; // (20 currently) variables: float time(time) ; time:units = "days since 1858-11-17 00:00:00" ; data: time = "1895-01-01", "1895-02-01", "1895-03-01", "1895-04-01", "1895-05-01", "1895-06-01", "1895-07-01", "1895-08-01", "1895-09-01", "1895-10-01", "1895-11-01", "1895-12-01", "1896-01-01", "1896-02-01", "1896-03-01", "1896-04-01", "1896-05-01", "1896-06-01", "1896-07-01", "1896-08-01" ; } So it looks like the times are just the first day of consecutive months ... --Russ Russ Rew UCAR Unidata Program address@hidden http://www.unidata.ucar.edu Ticket Details =================== Ticket ID: OZU-387092 Department: Support netCDF Priority: Low Status: Closed