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Re: 2D grids...

Arlindo da Silva (dasilva@hera.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Wed, 26 Mar 1997 14:58:35 -0500 (EST) 

Gary,

> 
> 
> I was wondering if there was any way in the netCDF standard to have a 2-d dim-
> ension grid, ie, N "coordinates" each of which is a lat-lon pair, and then each
> field is defined on that grid.
> 

Yes, I did something like this for the UWM/COADS data set (see CDL
below). The problem is that no software appear able to read it
directly. In retrospect, I believe it was a mistake, we should have
adopted something like the COARDS conventions (which I don't whether it
existed back in 1990).

   Arlindo.

...................................................................

netcdf sst {
dimensions:
	mon = 12 ;
	npoint = 42164 ;  // only ocean gridpoints

variables:
	short mon(mon) ;
		mon:long_name = "month" ;
	short lat(npoint) ;
		lat:long_name = "latitude of nth point" ;
		lat:units = "degrees_north" ;
		lat:add_offset = -90.5f ;
		lat:valid_range = 1s, 180s ;
	short lon(npoint) ;
		lon:long_name = "longitude of nth point" ;
		lon:units = "degrees_east" ;
		lon:add_offset = -0.5f ;
		lon:valid_range = 1s, 360s ;
	short clm(mon, npoint) ;
		clm:long_name = "1945-89 climatology for each month" ;
		clm:units = "celsius             " ;
		clm:scale_factor = 0.0099999998f ;
		clm:add_offset = 25.f ;
		clm:valid_range = -3495s, 858s ;

// global attributes:
		:source = "University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Version 1.06 of 02/11/93                      " ;
		:title = "sea surface temperature$" ;
}



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