Martin, I regularly use the following and it does not seem to cause any problem: frequency(11) = 21600., fields(1,11) = 'THETA ', levels(1,11) = 1., filename(11) = 'SST', frequency(31) = 2635200., fields(1,31) = 'THETA ', filename(31) = 'THETA', fileflags(31)= 'D ',