Hi Stephen,

You are correct, that MGET is internally downloading netCDF4 files from NASA and converting them, but that the generic conversion tool (Convert 2D Variable in NetCDF to ArcGIS Raster) does not currently support netCDF4, only netCDF3. The reason for this is, in short, that I only had time to add internal support for netCDF4 and update the NASA OceanColor tools to use it; I ran out of time and could not update the generic conversion tool yet.

I admit that is pretty lame, as a generic netCDF4 conversion tool would be very useful, but I prioritized the generic tool lower because ArcGIS already had a way to convert netCDF4s. You can do it by running the Make NetCDF Raster Layer tool (part of Multidimension Tools) then running Copy Raster to store the in-memory layer as a raster in the format you desire. As far as I know, the Make NetCDF Raster Layer tool does not support netCDF3 very well, so you still may need to use MGET for netCDF3.

If desired, you can also call MGET’s internal Python code to convert netCDF4s. I attached a Python script that shows how to do this. (We do not have enough resources to really support these MGET modules as a true public API but do not discourage people from playing with them.) It is possible to modify this script to do batched conversions of directories of files, which might be tedious to do with the existing ArcGIS tools from ArcGIS Model Builder, unless you have mastered some of the iteration tools.

Best,

Jason

Hi all,

So I’ve used the Create Raster for NASA OceanColor L3 SMI Product tool to download annual chl a products, and it works great.

However, NASA also produces seasonal chlorophyll a climatologies, which aren’t one of the options within this tool. If I download them manually, they appear to be NetCDF4 files, which AFAIK isn’t supported in any of the other MGET import tools. But I assume the Product tool must be doing this conversion internally from the downloaded files, isn’t it? If so, is there a way to run this conversion on files that I’ve manually downloaded?

I guess the alternative is to use the Create Climatology Rasters tool to manually create my own climatologies, but this seems silly if they’re already done and available.

Thanks,

Stephen