Recipe: Fortran program to read data from downloaded file
Problem
We want to read a downloaded data file using Fortran.
Solution
For the purpose of this example, we assume that we have already downloaded the file c1440_NR.inst01hr_3d_T_Cv.20060918_0900z.nc4 from the ftp server. For more information about file naming conventions, and how to download a file from the ftp server, please follow the links in the #See Also section.
Here we use the NetCDF-4 library to read the downloaded file (since NetCDF-4 uses HDF-5 as the underlying data format, HDF-5 library can also be used directly). First, we ensure that out NetCDF-4 library has been built with Fortran and HDF5 support. If both the queries
> nc-config --has-f90 > nc-config --has-hdf5
return "yes", we have a compatible NetCDF-4 library.
Below are two programs to read
- global temperature data
- temperature data over mainland US
from the downloaded file.