NCO NetCDF Operators

The NCO toolkit manipulates and analyzes data stored in
netCDF-accessible
formats, including
DAP,
HDF4, and
HDF5.
It exploits the geophysical expressivity of many
CF
(Climate & Forecast) metadata conventions,
the flexible description of physical dimensions translated by
UDUnits,
the network transparency of
OPeNDAP,
the storage features (e.g., compression, chunking, groups) of
HDF (the Hierarchical Data Format),
and many powerful mathematical and statistical algorithms of
GSL (the GNU Scientific Library).
NCO is
fast,
powerful,
and
free.

What is NCO?

The netCDF Operators (NCO) comprise a dozen standalone,
command-line programs that take
netCDF,
HDF, and/or
DAP
files as input, then operate (e.g., derive new data, compute
statistics, print, hyperslab, manipulate metadata) and output the
results to screen or files in text, binary, or netCDF formats.
NCO aids analysis of gridded scientific data. The shell-command style
of NCO allows users to manipulate and analyze files interactively, or
with expressive scripts that avoid some overhead of higher-level
programming environments.

Traditional geoscience data analysis requires users to work with
numerous flat (data in one level or namespace) files.
In that paradigm instruments or models produce, and then repositories
archive and distribute, and then researchers request and analyze,
collections of flat files.
NCO works well with that paradigm, yet it also embodies the necessary
algorithms to transition geoscience data analysis from relying solely
on traditional (or “flat”) datasets to allowing newer
hierarchical (or “nested”) datasets.

How to Contribute: Volunteer, Endorse, or Donate

The NCO project homepage
points to mailing lists, discussion forums, and instructions to make
contributing easy.

Acknowledgements

NCO has been supported by volunteers and professionals since 1995. External support from DOE, NASA, and NSF has sustained development and addition of its most powerful features.