NETCDF.CDF

Basic Information

File-Type

netcdf.cdf

File-Form

UNFORMATTED

Version

August 2010

Description-Date

August 2016

Significance of the File

The BAW instance of a NetCDF file developed since 2010 is a file of type CF-NETCDF.NC.

Universal (open source) file format for measured and/or model data. Data (variables) can be either scalar variables as well as one- or multi-dimensional arrays. The format allows effective storage for variables of different dimension, size and type. Attributes can be used to attach additional informations to the whole file as well as to individual variables. Further informations can be found under example-file/documents below.

File-Contents (in Catchwords)

header with metadata:
1. list of dimensions (name and length),
2. list of variables (name, type and dimension(s)) for which data are stored in the file,
3. attributes related to variables (long_name, units etc.), and
4. global attributes (title, history etc.).
Remark: the names of attributes as well as standard variable names should be chosen according to the following given conventions:
- NetCDF Climate and Forecast (CF) Metadata Convention, and
- CF Standard Name Table.
data for all variables stored in the file:
1. (optional) coordinate-variable data,
2. (optional) data for ordinary variables, for which only one data record is stored in the file, and finally
3. (optional) data for record-variables (which have one unlimited dimension, e.g. time), which can be stored several times.

Programs using this Type of File

BATCHPLOT, DATACONVERT, GETDATA, IO_VOLUME, TELEMAC-2D [SediMorph], UNK, UNS, UNTRIM , UNTRIM2, [SediMorph, k-Modell]

Example-File

general informations can be found on the NetCDF-Homepage as well as in several NetCDF-documents related to the C, FORTRAN 77 and FORTRAN 90 programming interfaces;
io_dataset_ui (User-Interface), BAW-DH's User-Interface for different file formats;
names for dimensions and variables should be chosen according to various conventions. A detailed description of the names actually used at BAW-DH can be found in

base module dimension (mod_b_dim.f90) and
base module attribute (mod_b_att.f90).

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