Version 4.7.3 of the netCDF-C library is now available.

Changes in the netCDF-C library include (but are not limited to):

• Fixed an issue where installs from tarballs would not properly compile in parallel environments.
• The library was modified so that rewriting the same attribute happens without deleting the attribute, to avoid a limit on how many times this may be done in HDF5.
• Add a dispatch version number to netcdf_meta.h and libnetcdf.settings, in case we decide to change dispatch table in future.
• Now testing that endianness can only be set on atomic ints and floats.
• Fix for subtle error involving var and unlimited dim of the same name, but unrelated, in netCDF-4.
• Update for attribute documentation.
• Corrected assignment of anonymous (a.k.a. phony) dimensions in an HDF5 file. Now when a dataset uses multiple dimensions of the same size, netcdf assumes they are different dimensions.

Version 4.7.2 of the netCDF-C library is now available. This release primarily corrects an error the Unidata netCDF team has been observing on newer versions of OSX, but additional improvements are included as well.

Version 4.3.1 of the netCDF-C++ library and is now available.

Changes in the netCDF-C++ library include (but are not limited to):

• Added cmake support to distribution files created by make dist.
• Added ncFile::create(), also added a new open function and constructor to allow for more flexibility when opening a file.
• Addressed an issue reported with Intel Compilers 17.0.0.
• Updated how configure determines information about the existing netCDF-C install.
• Corrected an issue where cmake-based builds weren't generating ncxx4-config.

Version 4.7.1 of the netCDF-C library and version 4.5.0 of the netCDF-Fortran library are now available.

Aodhan Sweeney

by Aodhan Sweeney
2019 Unidata summer intern

This summer at Unidata I worked on expanding functionality for both the netCDF C++ library and the Python data access tool Siphon. Previously, the netCDF C++ library was lacking important functionality that was included in other netCDF libraries. Fortunately, adding this functionality is a straightforward process. I created function wrappers in the C++ library that would call previously made functions in the C library. This allows those working in a C++ framework to continue to use the netCDF libraries without sacrificing additional functionality.

This document defines the variant of the netcdf-c library API that can be used to read/write NCZarr dataset. Additionally, any special new flags or other parameter values are defined. It is expected that this document should be consistent with the NetCDF ZARR Data Model Specification [1].

This document defines the initial netcdf Zarr (NCZarr) data model to be implemented. As the Zarr version 3 specification progresses, this model will be extended to include new data types.

The Unidata NetCDF group is proposing to provide access to cloud storage (e.g. Amazon S3) by providing a mapping from a subset of the full netCDF Enhanced (aka netCDF-4) data model to one or more existing data models that already have mappings to key-value pair cloud storage systems.

The initial target is to map that subset of netCDF-4 to the Zarr data model [1]. As part of that effort, we intend to produce a set of related documents that provide a semi-formal definition of the following.

Version 4.8.1 of the netCDF Operators (NCO) has been released. NCO is an Open Source package that consists of a dozen standalone, command-line programs that take netCDF files as input, then operate (e.g., derive new data, average, print, hyperslab, manipulate metadata) and output the results to screen or files in text, binary, or netCDF formats.

NetCDF has historically offered two different storage formats for the netCDF data model: files based on the original netCDF binary format, and files based on the HDF5 format. While this has proven effective in the past for traditional disk storage, it is less efficient for modern cloud-focused technologies such as those provided by Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud Object Storage, and other cloud service providers. To that end, the Unidata development team is happy to announce that we are expanding the storage solutions available through the netCDF software libraries.