NetCDF in QGIS

1. Introduction

QGIS supports reading and visualising NetCDF data as raster or mesh layers. You can also export layers in a NetCDF to other raster formats, such as GeoTIFF.

A NetCDF (Network Common Data Form) is a format that is used for array-oriented scientific data. A NetCDF file is self-describing, i.e. it includes metadata that describes the data it contains. It is widely used in climate science, meteorology, oceanography, and other fields.

A NetCDF file is defined by:

• Dimensions: the axes of the data arrays (e.g. time, latitude, longitude)
• Variables: data values defined over the dimensions
• Attributes: additional information about the data (e.g. units)

In this tutorial you'll learn to:

• Load NetCDF raster data in QGIS
• Style NetCDF raster data
• Animate temporal NetCDF rasters (only in QGIS 3.38 or newer)
• Export NetCDF raster data to GeoTIFF
• Load NetCDF as mesh
• Style NetCDF mesh
• Export time series values from points

For the tutorial you can use the NetCDF file from the main course page. It's an output file of PyWAPOR.