Bit masks in PyNIO NetCDF?

Dear PyNGL people,

For a shelf sea modeller GRIB has one killer feature. It allows for bit
masking of values:

http://www.wmo.ch/web/www/WDM/Guides/Guide-binary-2.html#Section3

This means that it is only necessary to store values at actual sea points. In
NetCDF it is common to store all values, including land (although as far as I
understand the NetCDF standard allows for bit masking). The effect of this in
my applications is that NetCDF files use more than ten times the storage
space of GRIB files (I have written a simple grib2nc converter using PyNIO).
Other oceanographic applications will experience similar problems (although
probably in most cases to a lesser degree).

Have you considered implementing NetCDF bit masking in NGL?

Cheers,
Jesper

_______________________________________________
pyngl-talk mailing list
pyngl-talk_at_ucar.edu
http://mailman.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/pyngl-talk
Received on Fri Mar 02 2007 - 03:25:49 MST