NetCDF

Building NetCDF

NetCDF support requires the  NetCDF library. Once it is built and installed, use the "--with-netcdf=<path to install tree>" option to configure and build GDAL.

See  NetCDF Quick Instructions for instructions on how to build NetCDF.

Conflicts with HDF4

If building GDAL with both HDF4 and NetCDF support it is necessary to build the HDF library specially or a dangerous conflict will occur. See the HDF topic for details.

CygWIN

Please note that with CygWIN you need to be sure that the DLLs are executable, or GDAL will not execute. Use the command chmod a+rx [NetCDF DLLs] . The netCDF DLLs directory must be in your PATH.

Improvements to the NetCDF driver

The newer NetCDF-4 library offers features such as per-variable compression (using the deflate algorithm) and chunking which require the HDF5 library. To enable this, "--enable-netcdf4" (and perhaps --with-hdf5=<path_to_hdf5>) must be added to netcdf configure.

The development version of the driver (1.9-dev in svn or nightlies) adds support for NetCDF-4 file format, as well as the 64-bit offset file format. HDF4 and HDF5 files are also supported, although the respective driver is used if available. The syntax "NETCDF:<file.hdf>" forces the use of the NetCDF driver.

Please look into NetCDF_Improvements for information regarding these and other improvements to the GDAL NetCDF driver.

Open Tickets

#1808
NetCDF Driver Improvements
#1894
netcdf driver does not support irregular grids (was: NetCDF file lacks georeferencing)
#2540
band selection in NETCDF driver
#2581
netcdf: add metadata record for original array dimension when reading from multidimensional files
#2584
NetCDF Global EASE-Grid 8-day Blended SSM/I and MODIS Snow Cover flipped east/west?
#2893
netcdf driver does not read and write CF-1.0 coordinate system properly for projected CRS
#4245
PAM stores duplicate metadata even if the format and driver support
#4285
OGR does not support PROJ.4 +proj=ob_tran , rotated_pole is not supported by the netcdf driver
#4484
gdalwarp on large netcdf datasets sets data from first input dataset to <nodata> and generates error if -dstnodata option is used with netcdf-4 file