[CF-metadata] CF convention for time variable dimension

chelle gentemann chelle at remss.com
Thu Jun 16 17:45:55 MDT 2005


In the CF conventions document:


>Time axis:
>
>double time(time) ;
>   time:long_name = "time" ;
>   time:units = "days since 1990-1-1 0:0:0" ;

When I try to read a netCDF file that has been written with the recommended 
convention, it won't always work.  Matlab yes.  NCBROWSE yes.  Fortran NO.
In Fortran, you cannot have an dimension indice and a variable with the 
same name.  I can easily program around this but not in an automated way 
for an unknown file format...
The program cdf2fortran which is linked to on the UNIDATA website will take 
any netcdf file and create a fortran program to read it.  This does not 
work with CF compliant data because of the way you have defined 
time(time).  For that matter, lat(lat) also would break it...

Is this a known problem?
I can just change the time indice to ntime so
time(ntime) and then it will work with C, fortran, ... you name it.
But then I won't be CF compliant....

Chelle
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