After three years of efforts by John Caron, Jonathan Gregory, and Steve Hankin hammering out conventions for feature types, the result was released in December, 2011.

This document provides standard conventions for representing discrete sampling geometries, such as time series, vertical profiles and trajectories

• Discrete sampling geometries are lower-dimensionality “paths” through space-time.
• The new conventions "offer advantages of efficiency and clarity for storing a collection of features in a single file".
• Multiple representations are specified that implement different tradeoffs: multidimensional array representations and ragged array representations
• The conventions have been implemented in NetCDF-Java using the netCDF classic model

2012 Unidata NetCDF Workshop > Update on CF developments