Dan, in my opinion, your current 2-dimensional time variable is reasonable
the way you have it now. Also I think that this is not a CF violation. By
making this variable two-dimensional, it ceases to be a formal coordinate
variable by CF rules. Instead it becomes ordinary array data that is used
by knowledgeable applications in association with other data in the file.
On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 11:22 AM Daniel Wright via netcdfgroup <
netcdfgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hey everyone! New poster here.
>
> I am the creator of a software, which, among other things, generates
> really large numbers of gridded precipitation “storm scenarios” in netcdf
> format, which can then be used for things like monte carlo simulation to
> estimate 100-year floods. I have a question I am hoping someone could weigh
> in on. The question has real-world significance, because I am working with
> the US Army Corps of Engineers Hydrologic Engineering Center to figure out
> how to get output from my RainyDay software into their flood simulation
> software.
>
> Anyway, here’s the issue: Because the software generates large numbers
> (think 10,000+) of rainstorm scenarios, each one has a distinct time (e.g .
> 72 hours of hourly precipitation), as well as a 2D (lat/lon) precipitation
> field for each time period. Of course it isn’t ideal to create 10,000+
> separate netcdf files, one for each scenario. So instead I can create one
> or several files, which contain multiple storms. Consider this example: Say
> a file contains N=500 storms, and each storm is comprised of 72 hours of
> hourly gridded data, but each storm has a different 72 hour period. My
> software currently writes the a 2-dimensional ‘time’ variable, specifically
> of size 500x72. This can be done, but as far as I can tell this violates CF
> standards.
>
> So the question is basically is there an alternative way that is compliant
> with standards like CF, but that can contain a large number of gridded
> “scenarios” each with a different time?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dan
>
> --
>
> Daniel B. Wright
>
> Associate Professor
>
> Civil and Environmental Engineering
>
> University of Wisconsin-Madison
>
> Hydroclimate Extremes Research Group (https://her.cee.wisc.edu/)
>
