uniform handling of netcdf and grib files

Hi,

I am making an application which I would like to be able to process
NetCDF files conforming to the Climate and Forecast (CF) Convention and
GRIB files in a uniform manner. The application can already process the
NetCDF files. I would therefore like to ask if I can depend on
standardized attributes (mainly lon, lat, time and vertical level)
attributes and variables in the NioFile and NioVariable objects for GRIB
files?

The GRIB files that I already have tested seem to have an integer
variable (forecast_time[number]) which is the offset in some specified
units (which seem to be defined in the grib standard), a variable
specific initial time (initial_time) attribute with format mm/dd/yyyy
(HH:MM), and the horizontal coordinates seem to be named
[gridnumber]_lon_[number] and [gridnumber]_lat_[number] with units that
are identical to the CF standard names (degrees_north and degrees_east).
Unfortunately none of my files contain vertical levels.

My application needs to be able to parse the coordinate variables in a
generic manner. Is that task doable with a reasonable effort?

I have only looked at grib files on regular grids where lon(lon) and
lat(lat) and I am well aware that the above does not hold for for
example rotated grids - but support for regular grids will be a start.

Regards,
Jesper

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Received on Fri Feb 29 2008 - 06:29:59 MST