CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonnetcdfcdo-climate
BBHuggin
BBHuggin

Reputation: 85

Combining a large amount of netCDF files

I have a large folder of netCDF (.nc) files each one with a similar name. The data files contain variables of time, longitude, latitude, and monthly precipitation. The goal is to get the average monthly precipitation over X amount of years for each month. So in the end I would have 12 values representing the average monthly precipitation over X amount of years for each lat and long. Each file is the same location over many years. Each file starts with the same name and ends in a “date.sub.nc” for example:

'data1.somthing.somthing1.avg_2d_Ind_Nx.200109.SUB.nc'
'data1.somthing.somthing1.avg_2d_Ind_Nx.200509.SUB.nc'
'data2.somthing.somthing1.avg_2d_Ind_Nx.201104.SUB.nc'
'data2.somthing.somthing1.avg_2d_Ind_Nx.201004.SUB.nc'
'data2.somthing.somthing1.avg_2d_Ind_Nx.201003.SUB.nc'
'data2.somthing.somthing1.avg_2d_Ind_Nx.201103.SUB.nc'
'data1.somthing.somthing1.avg_2d_Ind_Nx.201203.SUB.nc'

The ending is YearMonth.SUB.nc What I have so far is:

array=[]
f = nc.MFDataset('data*.nc')
precp = f.variables['prectot']
time = f.variables['time']
array = f.variables['time','longitude','latitude','prectot']

I get a KeyError: ('time', 'longitude', 'latitude', 'prectot'). Is there a way to combine all this data so I am able to manipulate it?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 5599

Answers (3)

ClimateUnboxed
ClimateUnboxed

Reputation: 8077

The command ymonmean calculates the mean of calendar months in CDO. Thus the task can be accomplished in two lines:

cdo mergetime data*.SUB.nc  merged.nc  # put files together into one series
cdo ymonmean merged.nc annual_cycle.nc # mean of all Jan,Feb etc.

cdo can also calculate the annual cycle of other statistics, ymonstd, ymonmax etc... and the time units can be days or pentads as well as months. (e.g. ydaymean).

Upvotes: 1

N1B4
N1B4

Reputation: 3453

As @CharlieZender mentioned, ncra is the way to go here and I'll provide some more details on integrating that function into a Python script. (PS - you can install NCO easily with Homebrew, e.g. http://alejandrosoto.net/blog/2014/01/22/setting-up-my-mac-for-scientific-research/)

import subprocess
import netCDF4
import glob
import numpy as np

for month in range(1,13):
    # Gather all the files for this month
    month_files = glob.glob('/path/to/files/*{0:0>2d}.SUB.nc'.format(month))


    # Using NCO functions ---------------
    avg_file = './precip_avg_{0:0>2d}.nc'.format(month)

    # Concatenate the files using ncrcat
    subprocess.call(['ncrcat'] + month_files + ['-O', avg_file])

    # Take the time (record) average using ncra 
    subprocess.call(['ncra', avg_file, '-O', avg_file])

    # Read in the monthly precip climatology file and do whatever now
    ncfile = netCDF4.Dataset(avg_file, 'r')
    pr = ncfile.variables['prectot'][:,:,:]
    ....

    # Using only Python -------------
    # Initialize an array to store monthly-mean precip for all years
    # let's presume we know the lat and lon dimensions (nlat, nlon)
    nyears = len(month_files)
    pr_arr = np.zeros([nyears,nlat,nlon], dtype='f4')

    # Populate pr_arr with each file's monthly-mean precip
    for idx, filename in enumerate(month_files):
        ncfile = netCDF4.Dataset(filename, 'r')
        pr = ncfile.variable['prectot'][:,:,:]  
        pr_arr[idx,:,:] = np.mean(pr, axis=0)
        ncfile.close()

    # Take the average along all years for a monthly climatology
    pr_clim = np.mean(pr_arr, axis=0)  # 2D now [lat,lon]

Upvotes: 5

Charlie Zender
Charlie Zender

Reputation: 6322

NCO does this with

ncra *.01.SUB.nc pcp_avg_01.nc
ncra *.02.SUB.nc pcp_avg_02.nc
...
ncra *.12.SUB.nc pcp_avg_12.nc
ncrcat pcp_avg_??.nc pcp_avg.nc

Of course the first twelve commands can be done with a Bash loop, reducing the total number of lines to less than five. If you prefer to script with python, you can check your answers with this. ncra docs here.

Upvotes: 3

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