Read NetCDF Data

Climate datasets are commonly stored in NetCDF (Network Common Data Form), a flexible format designed for storing array-oriented scientific data. Efficiently reading and managing these files is a critical first step in climate data analysis.

In this chapter, we introduce several practical methods for loading NetCDF files using the Python xarray library, which provides convenient tools for working with labeled multi-dimensional arrays.

What You’ll Learn

• How to load a single consolidated NetCDF file

• How to combine multiple files using wildcards or file templates

• How to build file lists programmatically using year ranges

• How to downsample high-resolution data for faster analysis

The accompanying notebook provides hands-on examples for each method, and the overview page summarizes their typical use cases and limitations.

📂 All example data files are assumed to be located in the ../data/ directory relative to the notebook.