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I have been looking for a proper way to create a netCDF file that is compliant with the Climate and Forecast (CF) Metadata Convention. It is amazing that I can find a compliance checker for NetCDF files at the CF-Metadata web page, but I have problems to find any tools or methods to create such a file. How can I create a CF-compliant netCDF file? Are there any good tools, which I can use?

BHF
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ZZZ
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  • I see that NOAA has posted on their site NODC NetCDF Templates v1.0 the CDL templates, which can be used with NCO commands to create compliant files. I am new to this and I wonder if there is any other preferred ways? Thanks! – ZZZ Apr 16 '14 at 17:35
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    Just follow the documentation and use any NetCDF library of your choice? I'm not sure what your question is. – gerrit Apr 16 '14 at 18:17
  • Isn't netCDF more suited for [gis.stackexchange.com]? This question for example seems similar to me. – hugovdberg Apr 16 '14 at 19:19
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    Please don't ask shopping /recommendation questions here. Try [softwarerecs.se] – 410 gone Apr 17 '14 at 07:41
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    @hugovdberg Wouldn't it be like calling anything with a wheel on it a car? It is a machine-independent common data format, so yes there is no reason for GIS to not use it. Nowhere in my question I mentioned GIS. Nevertheless, thank you for the link that you provided. Although not the answer to my question, it is somewhat relevant to one aspect of it. Thumbs up! – ZZZ Apr 18 '14 at 21:18
  • @EnergyNumbers I have edited my question to make clear that I am not asking for a software suggestion specifically, but rather for proper means of doing it. I hope it is clearer now... – ZZZ Apr 18 '14 at 21:23
  • @ZZZ not really, you ask for a tool that creates netCDF, and being a fileformat you're asking for software, and at gis.se all tools for geoinformation management are discussed. Also from your comment it is unclear to me whether you mean GIS as a shortcut for ArcGIS or geoinformation systems in general, because I think the latter is relevant here. – hugovdberg Apr 18 '14 at 21:52
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    Without knowing what exactly your requirements are, it's really difficult to know how to answer this question. (Just so you know, in my previous job I installed a utility to make our data NetCDF complient. It was highly customized to our particular dataset. I don't know if a general solution is available or even possible.) If you provide more detail, we might be able to open this question then. – Jon Ericson Apr 18 '14 at 22:25
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    Hmm. This meta discussion is relevant here: http://meta.earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/77/would-geosciences-specific-software-support-be-on-topic-here Yes, this could be seen as a recommendation question, but it's also "I have this geoscience-related problem, how do I solve it". We wouldn't object to that if it didn't involve software. I agree with the too-broad aspect, and would welcome the asker giving a specific example of the problem to be solved. – Semidiurnal Simon Apr 19 '14 at 07:39
  • Not sure if this question is an exact duplicate, but it's pretty similar: http://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/1075/what-are-the-guidelines-for-constructing-variable-names-that-follow-cf-conventio – naught101 Sep 08 '14 at 02:37

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So far this has been the most suitable answer to my question...

NOAA's National Oceanographic Data Center has posted NetCDF Templates v1.0 the CDL templates on their web site. These can be used with netCDF Operator (NCO) commands to create Climate and Forecast (CF) compliant files.

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/data/formats/netcdf/
http://nco.sourceforge.net/
http://cf-convention.github.io/index.html

ZZZ
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