Tools to explore netCDF files
Here is a non exhaustive list of tools/software you can use to post-process and visualize netCDF files:
CDO (Climate Data Operators)
CDO is a collection of command-line operators to manipulate and analyze climate and numerical weather prediction data and can manipulate CAM model outputs (netCDF). CDO provides more than 350 operators!
NCO (netCDF Operators)
NCO is a suite of programs designed to perform certain “operations” on netCDF files, i.e., things like averaging, concatenating, subsetting, or metadata manipulation.
NCL (Ncar Command Language)
NCL is an interpreted language (no need to compile your program) designed specifically for scientific data analysis and visualization.
- NCL (Ncar Command Language)
- NCL Reference Card
- Introduction to NCL
- NCL Tutorial - DKRZ
- Getting started with NCL
- Create ensemble average of CMIP5 data
Ncview: a netCDF visual browser
Ncview is one of the simplest visual browser for netCDF format files. If you want to learn more about ncview:
- See a screenshot of ncview in action.
- Quick introduction: Everything you need to know to get working in 5 minutes.
Python programming language
Python is a general purpose programming and scripting language which includes powerful visualisation and data analysis tools. Matplotlib is a general purpose plotting library gioving Python the power of MatLab. NetCDF files can be read using the NetCDF4 library and/or Xarray. The most common distribution of Python for scientific use is the Anaconda distribution.
- Examples (python, Fortran, C++, etc.) to read and write netCDF files can be found here.
- Data processing and plotting using python
Useful Shell command (loops, etc.)
For more information see the Software Carpentry shell lesson.