Hi, Another approach to compression that wouldn't involve adding anything to netcdf would simply be to compress entire files using the "compress" utility, and uncompress them when needed. The disadvantage of this is that the metadata cannot even be accessed when the file is compressed. However, considering how little can be done with a file in which variables are compressed (see Russ's previous mail message), this may not be too high a price. Dave Raymond raymond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
netcdfgroup
archives: