20080630 Archive Tutorial NetCDF Data Extraction NCVweb

TUTORIAL NetCDF Data Extraction at the ARM Archive Using NCVweb NCVweb Overview Like many scientific organizations, the ACRF Data Archive stores and distributes atmospheric data from the ACRF sites in Network Common Data Format, or NetCDF. This file format is storage efficient, machine independent, and self describing. However, to work with the data files directly requires some programming skill and use of the NetCDF programming libraries, or API. NCVweb was developed to overcome these shortcomings with the data format. The application reduces the need of and problems associated with downloading large volumes of data, installing and configuring visualization software, or writing custom data exploration software. Since it operates by querying each file for the details necessary for visualization, little or no work goes into preparing the tool for new data streams. Since the tool is Web-based, ARM researchers and instrument mentors can visualize large and complex data sets without needing to be skilled in NetCDF programming. The tool supports a wide number of visualizations as outlined in the following table: NCVweb Plot Types Plot Type Example X-Y Time vs. Irradiance or Temperature vs. Altitude X-Y-Y2 Ambient and Calibration Temperatures Vs. Time Multi-Facility Soil Temperature at several different Facilities Vs. Time X-Y-Z Color Temperature Profile (over height and time) Image Horizontal Slices Plots of Temperature vs. Time ...