[MITgcm-support] Re: Netcdf - coordinates

[Ed Hill]

On Thu, 2004-10-21 at 13:04, Laure Zanna wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm using the mnc package and ferret to look at the output. It seems that the coordinates are not correctly saved in the netcdf file. The x coordinate runs as 1E to 90E, y as 1N to 40N and z is just the number of level.
> This make things a bit difficult when I'm trying to plot the streamfunctions in the different ocean
> Thanks, Laure


Hi Laure,

The problem you're encountering is probably a mismatch between how
Ferret interprets the NetCDF dimensions and variable names and how we
interpret them.  We're working to improve our support of the NetCDF
conventions (aiming for eventual "CF" compatibility) and its taking time
since none of the conventions appear to have a good conceptual model for
some of the coordinate systems that we need to support (eg. the "cube
sphere" grid).

As a temporary work-around, I suggest that you use either MatLAB or the
very convenient NCO ("NetCDF Operators") suite of utilities:

  http://nco.sourceforge.net/

to change the variable and/or dimension names within your NetCDF files
and/or to extract the portions of the files that you need to plot within
Ferret.  The most helpful of the NCO utilities for variable extraction
and renaming is "ncks" which is described at:

  http://nco.sourceforge.net/nco.html#ncks

Ed

-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD
office:  MIT Dept. of EAPS;  Rm 54-1424;  77 Massachusetts Ave.
             Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
emails:  eh3 at mit.edu                ed at eh3.com
URLs:    http://web.mit.edu/eh3/    http://eh3.com/
phone:   617-253-0098
fax:     617-253-4464