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 Note that the archive is no longer being updated. We provide the archive for reference; many of the answers presented here remain technically correct, even if somewhat outdated.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.
Hello, You would not use netCDF-C++, or the C or Fortran library to display any sort of plots; netCDF is a data storage library, not a data visualization library. Similarly, there are many places you can get air sounding data (and other observational Earth Sciences data) from; Google will be your best bet to find the appropriate sources. Organizations such as NOAA, NASA, the USGS, and others have public-facing data sets which might be of use to you. If I may, I'd like to ask you a question. Given the number of questions you've sent in to Unidata support, we're a bit curious about what it is you're trying to do, and if there might be a better way for us to offer you guidance. The tasks you're asking about are not trivial, but they are not impossible, either. However, they require a fundamental grounding in software development approaches, and a robust understanding of the various 'parts' of software. For example, to answer your question below in a high-level way, I'd say: "You'd need to identify your data source, and you'd need to identify the file format they are working in. Once you have that information sorted out, you can extract the data into arrays of the appropriate type and plot using a geospatial plotting library (or other plotting library appropriate to the task at hand). Your choice of language matters as well, a lot of this can be done fairly easily in Python, but C/C++ are also choices. Plotting is harder in C++ unless you're really making use of some specialized libraries. No, I don't know any of the specialized libraries, you might look at the offerings from Kitware, maybe there's something there, or maybe you should think about doing this in Python?" In short, you appear to be tackling advanced software problems, but (and I mean no disrespect) you seem to lack the grounding in the basics required for projects of these scope. Which is fine! There is nothing wrong with ambition, or being self taught, or struggling to figure out how to do something cool in software. That's how many of us here at Unidata got our start, after all. Which brings me back to my point above, about offering guidance. If you were a University student at a particular US institution, we might be able to direct you to local faculty who can help steer you towards the resources that would help you get off to a better start. Similarly, if you have a particular area of interest you're working in, maybe we can provide some resources for establishing good fundamentals. In any event, while it is in our nature to want to help, the questions you're asking are very broad, and aren't necessarily anything we're going to be able to help you with, unless we can get a better handle on the goal, skill set and resources we're working with. I hope this helps, have a great day, -Ward Ward Fisher address@hidden UCAR/Unidata - Software Engineer NetCDF Team Lead > how can i display upper air soundings plots using netcdf-C++ and where > would i get soundings data from? > > Ticket Details =================== Ticket ID: HXJ-757713 Department: Support netCDF Priority: Normal Status: Closed =================== NOTE: All email exchanges with Unidata User Support are recorded in the Unidata inquiry tracking system and then made publicly available through the web. If you do not want to have your interactions made available in this way, you must let us know in each email you send to us.