help on reading NETCDF file

[Dave Allured]

Alemu,

It sounds like you are new to reading netcdf files.  After unpacking an
ABRFC file with gunzip, you need to use ncdump -h to display the
metadata for one of the netcdf files.  This will give you a lot of
information about the internal organization of the netcdf file.

Ncdump is not part of Grads, it is part of the netcdf software from
Unidata.  You should install netcdf on your computer if you do not
already have it.

    http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/

The ABRFC files are in an unusual netcdf format.  The sdfopen command in
Grads will not be able to read them, because they do not conform to
COARDS conventions.  So if you want to use Grads to read this data, you
will need to install Grads version 1.9.  You will also need to use a
data descriptor file (DDF) with a "dtype netcdf" entry and other
descriptors for the data array.  Please see this documentation:

    http://grads.iges.org/grads/gadoc/aboutgriddeddata.html
    http://grads.iges.org/grads/gadoc/

Good luck.

--Dave A.
CDC/NOAA/CIRES

Alemu Tadesse wrote:

>Hello everybody,
>
>I have down loaded 1 hrly netcdf precipitation data
>from http://www.srh.noaa.gov/abrfc/archive/. It is an
>ABRFC data (http://www.srh.noaa.gov/abrfc/). However,
>there is no information on the format of the data and
>no body replies to my email requesting the format too.
>
>
>Does anybody here used the data ? If so , can any one
>assist me in reading it. Thanks
>
>Alemu
>
>
>
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>Alemu Tadesse
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