Re: grib to netcdf

• To: Thomas Reichler <reichler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: Re: grib to netcdf
• From: Robb Kambic <rkambic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Tue, 18 May 2004 19:36:57 -0600 (MDT)

On Tue, 18 May 2004, Thomas Reichler wrote:

Hi Robb,

I asked Lori Thompson from here at GFDL the question below, and she
thought you might be able to help me with this.

The problem is that I have ECMWF data (era-40) which is want to
transform to nc-data. Is there any quick fix for this problem, or is it
possible to simply rename the variable names in the grib file?

Thanks
Thomas


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: grib to netcdf
Date: Sun, 16 May 2004 16:51:54 -0400
From: Thomas Reichler <reichler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Lori Thompson <Lori.Thompson@xxxxxxxx>
CC: Thomas Reichler <reichler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0402171358240.15096-100000@lat>

Lori,

I am having problems to convert grib to netcdf using the usual
gribtocdl/gribtonc technique. The reason is that my grib file contains
variable names which begin with a number (eg. 10U), which is being

Thomas,

That's a tough one. The specification of netCDF says variable names cannot
start with a digit but it can have [a-zA-Z0-9_] characters. The best
answer would be to go to the data source and ask if they have decoder to
ascii format, etc.  Then the variable names would have to be changed.
In the Unidata decoders package there's a program
ascii2nc that probably could be configured to produce a netcdf file. But,
it's going to be a lot of work. Maybe the data provide could change the
names also, it's almost standard that variable names don't start with a
digit. I'll ask around at work if anyone has an idea.

Robb...

rejected by ncgen as an error. Do you have any idea how I could change
variable names in a grib file, or is there any other method for the
conversion?

Thomas

==============================================================================
Robb Kambic                                Unidata Program Center
Software Engineer III                      Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research
rkambic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                   WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
==============================================================================