NetCDF CF-1.8 Gridded Air Temperature (.nc)
A NetCDF-3 classic file holding a 4x5x6 air-temperature field with full CF-1.8 coordinate metadata: standard names, axis attributes, units on every variable, and a declared _FillValue. Use it to check that a reader attaches units and coordinates to the array rather than returning bare numbers.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Conventions | CF-1.8 |
| Dimensions | time=4, lat=5, lon=6 |
| Coordinates | lat (degrees_north), lon (degrees_east), time (hours since 1970-01-01) |
| Data variable | tas — float32, units K, standard_name air_temperature |
| _FillValue | -9999.0 |
| tas[0,0,0] | 270.000 K |
| tas[3,4,5] | 267.000 K |
Specifications
- Format
- NetCDF-3 classic (CDF-1)
- Conventions
- CF-1.8
- Dims
- time=4, lat=5, lon=6
- Variable
- tas float32 (K)
- Fill Value
- -9999
- Values
- 120
- Seed
- analytic, seedless
Testing contract
Expected to pass- Scenario
- Open the file with a CF-aware reader and resolve the tas variable together with its coordinate variables and attributes.
- Expected result
- tas is float32 with shape (4, 5, 6), units 'K', standard_name 'air_temperature', _FillValue -9999.0, and lat/lon/time attach as coordinates in that order.
What is a .nc file?
NetCDF (.nc, Network Common Data Form) is a binary, self-describing format for array-oriented scientific data. It stores multidimensional variables (like temperature over latitude, longitude, and time) with named dimensions, units, and metadata attributes, and is a standard in climate, ocean, and geoscience.
How to use this file
Use an example .nc file to test NetCDF readers (netCDF4, xarray, Panoply), CF-convention validators, and gridded-data pipelines, or to verify dimension and variable extraction.
How to use this file for testing
“NetCDF CF-1.8 Gridded Air Temperature (.nc)” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for Scientific data, Serialization testing. Citation catalogs (BibTeX, RIS), chemistry structures (MDL Molfile, PDB), and gridded binary data (NetCDF, FITS) — for testing reference managers, molecule viewers, and scientific-data loaders.
Documented properties for this file: NetCDF-3 classic (CDF-1). Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.
Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.
Scientific fixtures are small, valid, and fully synthetic — no real organism, patient, sample, or observation. Point your parser or loader at the file and check it reads the documented records, variables, or headers; binary formats ship a readable twin or metadata listing for comparison.
Related files
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- binDICOM-Shaped Part 10 File — Explicit VR, Synthetic Phantom (.bin)A DICOM Part 10 file built byte by byte: 128-byte preamble, the DICM magic, an explicit-VR file meta group and a 27-element dataset ending in 16-bit pixel data. Every identifier is invented: the patient name is SYNTHETIC^PHANTOM, the instance UIDs sit under the unregistered 2.25 UUID arc, and the pixels are a generated pattern. There is no protected health information here and nothing in the file refers to a real person, device or study.
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