NCO Homepage
Author: csz
Keywords: NCO Homepage, netCDF, netCDF operator, GCM, HDF, scientific data

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# Bienvenue sur le netCDF Operator (NCO) site

## Current stable NCO version is 5.1.4 released

News & Milestones What is NCO? Contributing NCO→SDO Project Publications Release Highlights Executables Documentation FAQ Help/Support/Contacts ANNOUNCE/ChangeLog/README/TODO Source Code Compiling Supercomputers Known Problems People |

The NCO toolkit manipulates and analyzes data stored in netCDF-accessible formats, including DAP, HDF4, HDF5, and, most recently, Zarr. NCO exploits the geophysical expressivity and logic of many CF (Climate & Forecast) metadata conventions, the flexible description of physical dimensions translated by UDUnits, the network transparency of OPeNDAP, the storage capabilities (e.g., compression, chunking, groups) of HDF (the Hierarchical Data Format), many powerful mathematical and statistical algorithms of GSL (the GNU Scientific Library), and the lossy and lossless compression codecs provided by the CCR (Community Codec Repository). NCO is fast, powerful, and free.

## Recent Releases & Milestones

- 2023 Feb 09: 5.1.5 In Progress...
- 2023 Jan 10: 5.1.4 Depth Interpolation
- 2022 Nov 28: 5.1.3 EAMxx fix
- 2022 Nov 18: 5.1.2 EAMxx
- 2022 Oct 28: 5.1.1 NCZarr, stdin
- 2022 Jul 12: 5.1.0 Compression filters
- 2022 May 02: 5.0.7 SGS + Sub-SGS fixes
- 2022 Feb 02: 5.0.6 Small fixes
- 2022 Jan 24: 5.0.5 BitRound
- 2021 Dec 04: 5.0.4 Splitter API revamp
- 2021 Oct 06: 5.0.3 Granular BitRound
- 2021 Sep 24: 5.0.2 MOAB/mbtempest
- 2021 Jul 13: 5.0.1 ncremap MPI support
- 2021 Jun 18: 5.0.0 ncremap masks, fixes
- 2021 May 14: 4.9.9 ncremap masks, fixes
- 2021 Mar 21: 4.9.8 Small features/fixes
- Milestones from 200301–202012 (versions 2.8.4–4.9.7)
- News and Announcements from 199801–200212 (versions 1.1.0–2.8.3) and earlier

## What is NCO?

The netCDF Operators (NCO) comprise about a dozen standalone, command-line programs that take netCDF, HDF, and/or DAP files as input, then operate (e.g., derive new fields, compute statistics, print, hyperslab, manipulate metadata, regrid) and output the results to screen or files in text, binary, or netCDF formats. NCO aids analysis of gridded and unstructured scientific data. The shell-command style of NCO allows users to manipulate and analyze files interactively, or with expressive scripts that avoid some overhead of higher-level programming environments.

Traditional geoscience data analysis requires users to work with numerous flat (data in one level or namespace) files. In that paradigm instruments or models produce, and then repositories archive and distribute, and then researchers request and analyze, collections of flat files. NCO works well with that paradigm, yet it also embodies the necessary algorithms to transition geoscience data analysis from relying solely on traditional (or “flat”) datasets to allowing newer hierarchical (or “nested”) datasets.

The next logical step is to support and enable combining all datastreams that meet user-specified criteria into a single or small number of files that hold all the science-relevant data organized in hierarchical structures. NCO (and no other software to our knowledge) can do this now. We call the resulting data storage, distribution, and analysis paradigm Group-Oriented Data Analysis and Distribution (GODAD). GODAD lets the scientific question organize the data, not the ad hoc granularity of all relevant datasets. The User Guide illustrates GODAD techniques for climate data analysis:

- `ncap2` netCDF Arithmetic Processor (examples)
- `ncatted` netCDF ATTribute EDitor (examples)
- `ncbo` netCDF Binary Operator (addition, multiplication...) (examples)
- `ncclimo` netCDF CLIMatOlogy Generator (examples)
- `nces` netCDF Ensemble Statistics (examples)
- `ncecat` netCDF Ensemble conCATenator (examples)
- `ncflint` netCDF FiLe INTerpolator (examples)
- `ncks` netCDF Kitchen Sink (examples)
- `ncpdq` netCDF Permute Dimensions Quickly, Pack Data Quietly (examples)
- `ncra` netCDF Record Averager (examples)
- `ncrcat` netCDF Record conCATenator (examples)
- `ncremap` netCDF REMAPer (examples)
- `ncrename` netCDF RENAMEer (examples)
- `ncwa` netCDF Weighted Averager (examples)

Note that the “averagers” (`ncra` and `ncwa`) are misnamed because they perform many non-linear statistics as well, e.g., total, minimum, RMS. Moreover, `ncap2` implements a powerful domain language which handles arbitrarily complex algebra, calculus, and statistics (using GSL). The operators are as general as netCDF itself: there are no restrictions on the contents of input file(s). NCO's internal routines are completely dynamic and impose no limit on the number or sizes of dimensions, variables, and files. NCO is designed to be used both interactively and with large batch jobs. The default operator behavior is often sufficient for everyday needs, and there are numerous command line (i.e., run-time) options, for special cases.

## How to Contribute: Volunteer, Endorse, or Donate

NCO has always (since 1995) been Open Source. SourceForge.net started hosting NCO in March, 2000. This facilitated collaboration, code contributions, and support.

In March, 2015, NCO development moved to GitHub.com. We continue to use the SourceForge discussion fora for historical continuity (seventeen years of searchable Q&A). No matter what your programming background there is a task you can help with. From re-organizing the TODO list itself, to improving this cheesy webpage, to documentation, to designing and implementing new features and interfaces, we need your help! The project homepage contains mailing lists, discussion forums, and instructions to make contributing to NCO easy.

Many users feel unable to volunteer their time. An equally effective contribution in the long-run would be your endorsement, which may make the difference between a declined and an accepted proposal. An endorsement can be a few sentences that describes how NCO benefits your work or research. E-mail your endorsement to Charlie “my surname is zender” Zender with Subject: “NCO Proposal Endorsement”. This information is useful advocating for more NCO support. “What future proposals?” you ask, “Aren't you already funded?” Yes, in 2012 NASA funded us to implement netCDF4 groups and HDF support, and in 2014 NASA funded us to improve regridding. These funds are/were primarily for development and maintainance of specific features. To realize our grander ambition, i.e., to shift geoscience data analysis from a flat- to a hierarchical-paradigm (GODAD), will require a sustained effort and software ecosystem that understands and implement hierarchical dataset concepts. And it's hard to sell a federal agency on the wisdom of investing in a paradigm shift! Other more prosaic tasks that need work are, for example, I/O parallelization (!!!), user-defined and non-atomic types, more CF conventions, cloud-services, JSON back-end, and user-defined `ncap2` functions. If you send an endorsement, please include (at least) your Name, Title, and Institutional affiliation.

Lastly, as of June, 2003, if you're more strapped for time than money and want to contribute something back, consider a monetary donation. This may incentivize us to tackle your favorite `TODO` items. Inspired by President Obama's plan to bring more transparency to government investment, these homepage donation counters track the influence of your monetary donations on NCO development:
Donations received between 20030624 and 20220225: US$269.77. Thank you, donors!
NCO features “incentivized” by these donations: More emoticons in the documentation :)

## NSF Compression Project

The National Science Foundation Grant NSF OAC-2004993 funded our CANDEE Project, “Elements: Advanced Lossless and Lossy Compression Algorithms for netCDF Datasets in Earth and Engineering Sciences (CANDEE)” from 20200701–20230630 as part of the Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI) program.

UCI's goal is to enable modern lossy and lossless compression in geoscientific and engineering research that employs the netCDF/HDF data format. We first developed, with our partner E. Hartnett (NOAA), the Community Codec Repository (CCR) a robust, extensible software infrastructure for making compression algorithms transparently available for netCDF users. We then developed the Granular BitGroom quantization algorithm, and implemented it, and the BitRound algorithm, and the Zstandard codec, into the CCR and into the netCDF-C library for wider adoption. We are quantifying the efficacy of quantization/compression at reducing dataset size, and thereby storage, power, and associate GHG emissions. We are proposing adoption of these methods in CMIP7.

## NSF EarthCube Project

The National Science Foundation Grant NSF ICER-1541031 funded the Unidata-led EarthCube Project, “EarthCube IA: Collaborative Proposal: Advancing netCDF-CF for the Geoscience Community” from 20150901–20170831 as part of the Integrative and Collaborative Education and Research (ICER) program.

UCI's primary role was to help extend CF to cover hierarchical data structures, aka groups. We developed the Group-Oriented Data Analysis and Distribution (GODAD) paradigm for geoscience data analysis. We helped convene workshops for interested stakeholders in Boulder in 2016 and 2017, at ESIP in 2018, and CF adopted our Groups proposal in 2019 and our extended integer types proposal in 2020.

## DOE E3SM Project

The Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) project, a part of DOE's Earth System Modeling (ESM) program, has since 2015 supported our development of parallel climatology, timeseries splitting, and regridding workflows to help analyze E3SM output. Most NCO development during these years is a direct result of this DOE support.

## NCO-Related Publications and Presentations

- Zender, C. S. (2022), What Geoscientists Want: Short and Sweet Commands with Eco-friendly Data, Presented to the Computational and Information Systems Lab (CISL) Seminar Series, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, February–16, 2022 (virtual). PDF
- Zender, C. S. (2021), What Geoscientists Want: Short and Sweet Commands with Eco-friendly Data, Presented to the 104th American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, New Orleans, LA, December 13 17, 2021. Abstract IN32C-01. MP4, PDF
- Hartnett, E. J., C. S. Zender, W. Fisher, D. Heimbigner, H. Lei, B. Curtis, and K. Gerheiser (2021), Quantization and Next-Generation Zlib Compression for Fully Backward-Compatible, Faster, and More Effective Data Compression in NetCDF Files, Presented by E. Hartnett to the 104th American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, New Orleans, LA, December 13 17, 2021. Abstract IN15A-05. PDF
- Zender, C. S. (2021), Using the self-describing netCDF format to accelerate scientific workflows, Presented to the US Climate Variability and Predictability Program (CLIVAR) Working Group on Emerging Data Science Tools for Climate Variability and Predictability, May 3, 2021 (virtual). MP4, PDF
- Hartnett, E. J. and C. S. Zender (2021), Additional netCDF Compression Options with the Community Codec Repository (CCR), Presented by E. Hartnett to the 37th AMS Conference on Environmental Information Processing Technologies (EIPT) at the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, Paper 573, January 10–15 (virtual). PDF
- Jelenak, A., P. Leonard, and C. S. Zender (2019): NASA Dataset Interoperability Recommendations for Earth Science, Presented by A. Jelenak to the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) 2019 Winter Meeting, Bethesda, MD, January 15–17, 2019. PDF
- Zender, C. S. (2018): NCO-JSON: A Flexible, Complete JavaScript Object Notation for netCDF, Presented to the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, Washington, DC, December 10–14, 2018. Eos Trans. AGU, 98(54), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract IN31B-30. iPoster PDF
- Zender, C. S. (2018), NCO-JSON: JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) for netCDF. Presented to the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) 2018 Summer Meeting, Tucson, AZ, July 17–20, 2018. PDF
- Zender, C. S. and D. Lee (2018), CF-2 Group Proposal. Presented to the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) 2018 Summer Meeting, Tucson, AZ, July 17–20, 2018. PDF
- Lee, D. and Zender, C. S. (2018), CF-2 Group Proposal. Presented by D. Lee to the 2018 netCDF-CF Workshop, National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS), University of Reading, Reading, UK, June 19–20, 2018. PDF
- Zender, C. S. and J. D. Silver (2017), Bit-Grooming: Shave Your Bits with Razor-sharp Precision. Presented to the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, New Orleans, LA, December 11–15, 2017. Eos Trans. AGU, 97(54), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract IN11B-0037. PDF
- Zender, C. S. (2017): CF2-Group: Draft Climate/Forecast Conventions for Hierarchical Data+Metadata. Presented to the Earth Science Data Systems Working Group (ESDSWG) Dataset Interoperability Working Group (DIWG). Online meeting, September 20, 2017. PDF
- Zender, C. S. (2017), New Methods to Generate, Regrid, and Split Climate Data. Presented to the DOE Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) All-Hands Meeting, Potomac, MD, June 5–7, 2017. PDF
- Silver, J. D. and C. S. Zender (2017), The compression-error trade-off for large gridded data sets, Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 413–423, doi:10.5194/gmd-10-413-2017. PDF
- Zender, C. S. and J. D. Silver (2016), Bit Grooming: Put Climate Data on a Diet with Precision-Preserving Lossy Compression. Presented to the DOE Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) PI Meeting, Denver, CO, November 9–11, 2016. PDF
- Zender, C. S. (2016), Bit Grooming: Statistically accurate precision-preserving quantization with compression, evaluated in the netCDF Operators (NCO, v4.4.8+), Geosci. Model Dev., 9, 3199–3211, doi:10.5194/gmd-9-3199-2016. PDF
- Zender, C. S. (2016): Regrid Curvilinear, Rectangular, and Unstructured Data (CRUD) with ncremap, a new netCDF Operator. Presented to the Earth Science Data Systems Working Group (ESDSWG) Meeting, Greenbelt, MD, April 6--8, 2016. PDF
- Zender, C. S. (2016): Regridding Swath, Curvilinear, Rectangular, and Unstructured Data (SCRUD). Presented to the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC), Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, April 5, 2016. PDF
- Zender, C. S. (2015): Regrid Curvilinear, Rectangular, and Unstructured Data (CRUD) with ncremap, a new netCDF Operator. Presented to the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA, December 14--18, 2015. Eos Trans. AGU, 95(54), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract IN31A-1744. PDF
- Zender, C. S. (2015): Optimizing Intrinsic Parallelism to generate climatologies with netCDF Operators (NCO). Presented to the DOE Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) PI Meeting, Albuquerque, NM, November 2--4, 2015. PDF
- Zender, C. S., P. Vicente, and W. Wang (2015): Use netCDF Operators (NCO) to Improve Data Interoperability and Usability. Presented to the Earth Science Data Systems Working Group (ESDSWG) Meeting, Greenbelt, MD, March 24--26, 2015. PDF
- Zender, C. S., P. Vicente, and W. Wang (2014): Simplifying and accelerating model evaluation by NASA satellite data. Presented to the Earth Science Data Systems Working Group (ESDSWG) Meeting, Greenbelt, MD, March 24--26, 2014. PDF
- Zender, C. S. (2014): Use Hierarchical Storage and Analysis to Exploit Intrinsic Parallelism. Presented to the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC), Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, March 27, 2014. PDF
- Zender, C. S., P. Vicente and W. Wang (2013): Use Hierarchical Storage and Analysis to Exploit Intrinsic Parallelism. Presented at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, CA, December 9–13, 2013. Eos Trans. AGU, 93(53), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract IN52A-06. PDF
- Zender, C. S., P. Vicente and W. Wang (2013): The Future of Model Evaluation. Presented to the Chapman University Symposium on Big Data and Analytics: 44th Symposium on the Interface of Computing Science and Statistics, Chapman University, Orange, CA, April 4–6, 2013. PDF
- Zender, C. S., P. Vicente and W. Wang (2012): NCO: Simpler and faster model evaluation by NASA satellite data via unified file-level netCDF and HDF-EOS data post-processing tools.. Presented at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, CA, December 3–7, 2012. Eos Trans. AGU, 93(53), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract IN34A-07. PDF
- Zender, C. S., P. Vicente and W. Wang (2012): Simplifying and accelerating model evaluation by NASA satellite data.. Presented to the Earth Science Data Systems Working Group (ESDSWG) Meeting, Annapolis MD, November 13–15, 2012. PDF
- Presentation and Publications from 2006–2011

## Release Highlights

Stable releases receive unique tags and their tarballs are created and stored here at GitHub. Identical copies of those tarballs are also stored here on SourceForge for historical continuity. You may retrieve the source of tagged versions directly with, e.g., `git clone -b 5.1.4 http://github.com/nco/nco.git nco-5.1.4`.

- NCO 5.1.6: (Future) netCDF4 user-defined types support; `ncks --xtn` better extensive variable treatment?; `ncks --bsa` Byte-swap algoritm; `ncremap` small-circle weights;
- NCO 5.1.5: (In Progress, features in-progress or complete include) `all --cmp_sng` accept human-legible floating-point, unsigned codec parameters
- NCO 5.1.4: (Current Stable Release) `ncremap` SIMD fix on Compy
`ncremap` depth-based vertical interpolation
- NCO 5.1.3: `ncremap` column-MRV vertical interpolation
- NCO 5.1.2: `ncremap --vrt_in, --vrt_out, --ps_nm`; `ncclimo/ncremap -P eamxx`
- NCO 5.1.1: `all` support NCZarr I/O; `all` support `stdin` for input filenames; `all` support Blosc codecs (with netCDF 4.9.1+); `ncz2psx` debuts for NCZarr; `ncremap --add_fll` uses `sgs_frc < rnr_thr`
`ncremap --vrt_xtr=lnr,zero` methods
- NCO 5.1.0: `all --cmp_sng` to access modern codecs in netCDF, CCR, or HDF5; `ncremap` fix two sub-SGS issues
- NCO 5.0.7: `all` BitGroom 52 not 53 explicit bits; `ncclimo/ncremap` fix -P bug, warn if SGS not invoked; `ncremap --add_fll` use `mss_val_cmp_dbl`
- NCO 5.0.6: `ncclimo/ncremap` small bug-fixes
- NCO 5.0.5: `all` quantize add BitRound; `ncatted` Prepend mode; `ncclimo` climos filenames from stdin/positional arguments
- NCO 5.0.4: `ncclimo` `--stdin` API, `--permute` API, `--wnt_md`; `ncremap` improve ERWG, MOAB invocation and support; `ncremap` `--area_dgn`, `--alg=idw`; `ncwa` fix averaging with compression
- NCO 5.0.3: `all` quantize add DigitRound, default to Granular BitGroom; `ncremap` fix MOAB support
- NCO 5.0.2: `all` regridder, bitmasks respect `NC_FILL_FLOAT/DOUBLE`; `ncclimo` splitter support for regular expressions; `ncremap` support MOAB/`mbtempest`
- NCO 5.0.1: `ncremap` support MPI-enabled weight generators
- NCO 5.0.0: `ncks -X` support wrapped longitude; `ncremap` fixes for `mask_a/b`, MPI, `msk_nm`, stdin; `ncremap --add_fll, --msk_apl, --no_permute`
- NCO 4.9.9: `Windows` fix DAP https support; `ncks --chk_map` account for masks; `ncclimo --mth_[srt/end]` in high-frequency splitter, fix tpd, dpf inferral; `ncremap` curvilinear inferral, mask fixes, integer rounding, TR allow_no_overlap
- NCO 4.9.8: `ncclimo/ncremap` MALI climos; `ncclimo --mth_[srt/end]` in monthly splitter; `ncremap` fix MPAS grid inferral; `ncremap` deconvolve S1D sparse matrix fields (for CLM/ELM)
- Release Highlights from 200001–202012 (versions 1.1.47–4.9.7)

## Pre-built Executables

Pre-built binary executables are available for many platforms. Our source tarballs are always up-to-date, and work on our development systems (Fedora, Ubuntu, and MacOS). We also attempt to provide (theoretically) platform-independent sources in the most common Linux package formats (Debian and RPM). Below are one-line installation instructions and links to these and to packages for other platforms created by volunteers. Anyone willing to perform regular regression testing and porting of NCO to other platforms is welcome. We highly recommend the Anaconda method to first-time users, as it works on all platforms and (along with Homebrew) is perhaps the most up-to-date pre-packaged version. Previous versions of these executables are still available by searching the directory index here.

### AIX on IBM mainframes

- nco-4.2.5.aix53.tar.gz (): Executables AIX 5.3-compatible (last updated ). Maintained by NCO Project.
Newer (beta- or pre-release) packages are sometimes available for AIX users as described here. Thanks to NSF for supporting AIX machines at NCAR over the years.

### Anaconda (for *NIX, MacOS, and Windows)

Anaconda is a coordinated, cross-platform Python environment that utilizes the `conda` package manager. Anaconda can be easily installed into a user-owned directory. This bypasses the normal headache of relying on system-administrators to install the latest NCO on shared systems like supercomputers. Miniconda (rather than the full Anaconda install) suffices for most purposes. Up-to-date Anaconda-compatible versions of NCO for Linux, MacOS, and Windows are maintained at conda-forge. Install NCO in your Anaconda framework with one command ‘`conda install -c conda-forge nco`’. Or, alternatively, permanently add conda-forge (which teems with goodies besides NCO) to your automatically-searched channels with ‘`conda config --add channels conda-forge`’, then install NCO with ‘`conda install nco`’. The default NCO installed by `conda` is generally within a month of the latest release.
- nco-5.1.4 Executables Anaconda-compatible. Maintained by Filipe Fernandes.
Thanks to Rich Signell, Filipe Fernandes, Pedro Vicente, Xylar Asay-Davis and others for developing and maintaining the NCO package for conda.

### Debian and Ubuntu GNU/Linux

Debian NCO and Ubuntu NCO homepages. ‘`aptitude install nco`’ installs the standard NCO for your Debian-compatible OS. NCO packages in the Debian/Ubuntu repositories (e.g., Sid and Raring) generally lag the packages distributed here by 6–12 months. Newer (beta- or pre-release) packages are often available for intrepid Debian/Ubuntu users as described here.
Debian package for most recent NCO release (install with, e.g., ‘`dpkg --install nco_5.1.4-1_i386.deb`’):
- nco_5.1.4-1_amd64.deb : Executables AMD64-compatible
Thanks to Daniel Baumann, Sebastian Couwenberg, Barry deFreese, Francesco Lovergine, Brian Mays, Rorik Peterson, and Matej Vela for their help packaging NCO for Debian over the years.

### Fedora, RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and Community ENTerprise Operating System (CentOS) GNU/Linux

The Fedora NCO RPMs are usually up-to-date so that ‘`sudo dnf install nco`’ installs a recent version. RHEL NCO RPMs are documented at the Fedora site. OpenSUSE keeps NCO RPMs here. A comprehensive list of pre-built RPMs for many OS’s is here. Volunteers have updated and maintained fairly up-to-date NCO packages in Fedora since it was added by Ed Hill in about 2004. Thanks to Patrice Dumas, Ed Hill, Orion Poplawski, and Manfred Schwarb for packaging NCO RPMs over the years. Thanks to Gavin Burris and Kyle Wilcox for documenting build procedures for RHEL and CentOS.

### Gentoo GNU/Linux

Gentoo GNU/Linux homepage for NCO. Portage packages by George Shapavalov and Patrick Kursawe:
- nco-4.5.1: Latest(?) Gentoo package

### Mac OS Darwin

The most up-to-date executables are probably those in the tarball below. Those unfamiliar with installing executables from tarballs may try the (older) DMG files (you may need to add `/opt/local/bin` to your executable path to access those operators).
- nco-5.1.4.macos.13.0.tar.gz (): Executables MacOS 13.0-compatible (last updated ). Maintained by NCO Project.
- Fink packages for NCO: Currently NCO 4.9.5. Maintained by Alexander Hansen.
- Homebrew packages for NCO: Currently NCO 5.1.1. Install with ‘`brew install nco`’. Maintained by Carlo Cabrera, Ian Lancaster, Alejandro Soto, and others over the years.
- MacPorts infrastructure for NCO: Portfile: Currently NCO 5.1.1. Install with ‘`sudo port install nco`’. Maintained by Takeshi Enomoto.

### Microsoft Windows (version 10 and later) via Linux install

Installing a full linux subsystem in Windows 10 is straightforward: Search (e.g., in Google) for "install linux in windows 10". The first link, for example, is here. Follow those instructions. We suggest installing Ubuntu. Once you have, open a shell window and enter `sudo apt-get install nco`, just as you would do on any Debian or Ubuntu Linux platform. (These instructions are copied from Adrian Tompkins.)

### Microsoft Windows (version 9 and earlier) (native build, compiled with Visual Studio 2019, use this if unsure)

These native Windows executables (64bit) are stand-alone, i.e., do not require users to have any additional software. This is a new feature as of 20120615, please send us feedback. To build NCO from source yourself using MSVC with CMake, please see example in `nco/cmake/build.bat`.

- nco-4.9.5.windows.mvs.exe (): Windows Self-Extracting Installer (last updated ). Maintained by Pedro Vicente.

### Microsoft Windows (running Cygwin environment, compiled with GNU-toolchain)

- nco-5.0.1 Cygwin-compatible release.

In June, 2021 NCO became an officially supported Cygwin package, and can now be installed via the Cygwin setup installer. Thanks to Marco Atzeri, Mark Hadfield, and Pedro Vicente for creating Cygwin ports and tarballs over the years. Thanks to Cygnus Solutions and RedHat Inc. for developing and supporting Cygwin.

### Python Bindings Source and Documentation

## Documentation and Users Guide

The NCO Users Guide is available for reading in these formats:

- DVI Device Independent (`kdvi`, `xdvi`)
- HTML Hypertext (any browser)
- Info GNU Info (`M-x Info`, `emacs`)
- PDF Portable Document Format (`acroread`, `evince`, `kpdf`, `okular`, `xpdf`)
- Postscript Printing (`ghostview`, `kghostview`)
- TeXInfo Documentation Source code (`emacs`)
- Text Plain text (`more`)
- XML Extensible Markup Language (`firefox`)

`nco.texi` is the most up-to-date. Files `nco.dvi`, `nco.ps`, and `nco.pdf` contain all the mathematical formulae (typeset with TeX) missing from the screen-oriented formats. The screen-oriented formats—`nco.html`, `nco.info`, `nco.txt`, and `nco.xml`—contain all the documentation except the highly mathematical sections. Wenshan Wang of UCI contributed a Quick Reference Card (last updated ) suitable for printing, framing, and/or carrying on your person at all times.

### Other documentation:

- This abbreviation key unlocks the mysteries of the source code abbreviations and acronyms.

## FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

These questions show up almost as frequently as my mother. But they are more predictable:

- I still have questions, how do I contact the NCO project? The NCO project has various Q&A and discussion forums described below.
- Where can I find prebuilt NCO executables? Pre-built executables of some versions of NCO for the operating systems described above (Debian-compatible GNU/Linux, Fedora/RedHat GNU/Linux, Gentoo GNU/Linux, and MacOS). Otherwise, you may be on your own.
- Does NCAR support NCO? The NCAR CISL Consulting Service Group (CSG) supports NCO like other software packages. The NCAR CISL-suported executables are made available through “modules” so try `module load nco`. If you notice problems with the NCO installation on CISL machines, or if you would benefit from a more recent release or patch, then ask cislhelp. If you have a comment, suggestion, or bug report, then contact the developers as described below.
- Is there an easy way to keep up with new NCO releases? Subscribe to the `nco-announce` mailing list. This list is for NCO-related announcements, not for questions. `nco-announce` is very low volume—one message every few months.

## Help/Support/Contacts:

If you have support questions or comments please contact us via the Project Forums (rather than personal e-mail) so other users can benefit from and contribute to our exchange. Let us know how NCO is working for you—we'd like to hear. Have you read the documentation and browsed the forums to see if your question/comment has been reported before? Please read the Guide's suggestions for productive Help Requests and Bug Reports.

- Where should I ask my questions on how to use NCO? On the Help site.
- Where should I post suggestions/comments on NCO features and usage? On the Discussion site.
- Where are NCO development and new features discussed? On the Developer site.
- Where do I file an NCO bug-report? On the Bug Tickets site.

## ANNOUNCE/ChangeLog/README/TODO

Files containing useful information about the current distribution:

- `ANNOUNCE` Notes on current release
- `ChangeLog` Change History since 1997 (version 0.9)
- `README` Platforms and software required
- `TODO` An unordered list of features and fixes we plan

## Source Code

The simplest way to acquire the source is to download the compressed tarball:

- nco-5.1.4.tar.gz ( compressed tar-file)

The best way to acquire the source and occasionally update to the latest features is with Git. The browsable Repository contains up-to-the-minute sources and is the easiest way to stay synchronized with NCO features. Updating NCO source requires some familiarity with development tools, especially Git and Make. You may retrieve any NCO source code distribution you wish from GitHub. To avoid the churn that comes with using the latest snapshot, potential contributors may wish to retrieve a recent tagged (i.e., stable and released) version, This command retrieves the entire NCO repository (< 20 MB) and then checks out NCO version `5.1.4`:

`git clone https://github.com/nco/nco.git;cd nco;git checkout 5.1.4`

However, the most efficient way to actively track and develop NCO is to retrieve the current (“bleeding edge”) NCO snapshot. This command retrieves the latest NCO master branch into a local directory named `nco`:

`git clone git@github.com:/nco/nco.git`

, or

`git clone https://github.com/nco/nco.git ~/nco`

Track changes to the development version using

`cd nco;git pull`

One difference between running a "tagged" release (e.g., `5.1.4`) and the development version is that the tagged release operators will print a valid version number (e.g., `5.1.4`) when asked to do so with the `-r` flag (e.g., `ncks -r`). Snapshots will include the sub-version and patch-level in the version information (e.g., `5.1.4-alpha06`).

## Compilation Requirements

Best Practices:
- Although building NCO yourself can be easy, sexy, and lucrative, we recommend that you first try the pre-built executables for your system, e.g., `
  brew install nco # Linux or MacOS with Homebrew
  conda install -c conda-forge nco # Linux, MacOS, or Windows with Anaconda
  sudo aptitude install nco # Debian-based Linux systems like Debian, Mint, Ubuntu
  sudo dnf-install nco # Newer RPM-based Linux systems like CentOS, Fedora, openSUSE, RHEL
  sudo yum-install nco # Older RPM-based Linux systems like CentOS, Fedora, openSUSE, RHEL
  sudo port install nco # MacOS MacPorts
  ` If pre-built executables do not satisfy you (e.g., are out-of-date) and you want the latest, greatest features, then the first steps to build (i.e., compile, for the most part) NCO from source code are to install the pre-requisites: ANTLR version 2.7.7 (like this one not version 3.x or 4.x!) (required for `ncap2`), GSL (desirable for `ncap2`), netCDF (absolutely required), OPeNDAP (enables network transparency), and UDUnits (allows dimensional unit transformations). If possible, install this software stack from pre-built executables (commands to do so on Debian, Mac, and RPM systems follow below). ANTLR executables from major distributions are pre-built with the source patch necessary to allow NCO to link to ANTLR. If you must build the source stack yourself (e.g., due to lack of root access, or systems without packages such as AIX), build all libraries with the same compiler and switches. The ANTLR 2.x source file `CharScanner.hpp` must include this line: `#include <cstring>` or else `ncap2` will not compile (this ANTLR tarball is already patched). Recent versions of netCDF will automatically build OPeNDAP and UDUnits. Be sure your netCDF was built with `--enable-dap --enable-logging`. NCO is mostly written in C99, and although you may mix and match compilers, this is often difficult in practice and is not recommended. The exception is `ncap2` which is written in C++. ANTLR, OPeNDAP, and NCO must be built with the same C++ compiler to properly resolve the C++ name-mangling. NCO does not yet support newer ANTLR versions because the ANTLR 3.x and 4.x C++ interfaces are incomplete.
  For the reasons explained above (compiler compatibility) install as much pre-requisite and optional software as possible from pre-compiled packages. This is easy on modern package-oriented OSs. The NCL/ESMF packages provide ESMF_RegridWeightGen for use by `ncremap`, they are not required to build NCO. Remember, to compile NCO from source, you need not only the library dependencies the "devel" versions (which include the header files) of the
  For Conda-based systems (any OS, particularly useful for building NCO with newer versions of base libraries in personal directories): `
  conda install antlr=2.7.7 # ANTLR
  conda install bison cmake flex # GNU toolchain
  conda install curl # DAP-prereqs
  conda install esmf # ESMF_RegridWeightGen (external executable for ncremap)
  conda install expat # expat XML parser, a UDUnits-prereq
  conda install gsl # GSL
  conda install libgomp # OpenMP [linux]
  conda install libnetcdf # netCDF
  conda install llvm-openmp # OpenMP [osx]
  conda install tempest-remap # (external executables for ncremap)
  conda install udunits2 # UDUnits

  or, in one giant install,

  conda install antlr=2.7.7 bison cmake flex curl esmf expat gsl libgomp libnetcdf llvm-openmp tempest-remap udunits2
  ` For Debian-based systems (like Ubuntu) (`aptitude` is similar to and interchangeable with `apt-get`): `
  sudo aptitude install antlr libantlr-dev # ANTLR
  sudo aptitude install libcurl4-gnutls-dev libexpat1-dev libxml2-dev # DAP-prereqs (curl, expat XML parser)
  sudo aptitude install bison cmake flex gcc g++ # GNU toolchain
  sudo aptitude install gsl-bin libgsl-dev # GSL
  sudo aptitude install libnetcdf15 libnetcdf-dev netcdf-bin # netCDF and DAP
  sudo aptitude install libhdf5-serial-dev # HDF5
  sudo aptitude install ncl-ncarg # ESMF_RegridWeightGen (for ncremap)
  sudo aptitude install udunits-bin libudunits2-0 libudunits2-dev # UDUnits
  `
  For RPM-based systems like Fedora and CentOS (substitute `yum` for `dnf` on older systems): `
  sudo dnf install antlr antlr-C++ -y # ANTLR
  sudo dnf install curl-devel libxml2-devel -y # DAP-prereqs
  sudo dnf install expat expat-devel -y # expat XML parser, a UDUnits-prereq (RHEL only?)
  sudo dnf install libdap libdap-devel -y # DAP
  sudo dnf install bison cmake flex gcc gcc-c++ -y # GNU toolchain
  sudo dnf install ncl # ESMF_RegridWeightGen (for ncremap)
  sudo dnf install gsl gsl-devel -y # GSL
  sudo dnf install zlib-devel -y # zlib
  sudo dnf install librx librx-devel -y # RX
  sudo dnf install udunits2 udunits2-devel -y # UDUnits
  sudo dnf install blosc # Blosc codecs
  sudo dnf install libzstd # Zstandard codec
  sudo dnf install netcdf netcdf-devel -y # netCDF (install after codecs)
  `
  For Homebrew-based systems (MacOS or Linux): `
  brew install antlr@2 # ANTLR (keg-only)
  brew install cmake # Alternate build-engine
  brew install curl # DAP-prereqs
  brew install gsl # GSL
  brew install udunits # UDUnits
  brew install c-blosc # Blosc codecs
  brew install zstd # Zstandard codec
  brew install libnetcdf # netCDF (install after codecs)
  `
  For MacOS with MacPorts: `
  sudo port install antlr # Antlr
  sudo port install cmake # CMake
  sudo port install esmf # ESMF_RegridWeightGen (for ncremap)
  sudo port install libdap # DAP
  sudo port install gsl # GSL
  sudo port install udunits2 # UDUnits
  sudo port install zstd # Zstandard codec
  sudo port install netcdf # netCDF (install after codecs)
  sudo port install netcdf-fortran # netCDF for ESMF
  ` Without MacPorts, the system TeXInfo may be too old to build the documentation. In this case use `configure --disable-doc`.
  For Windows with Cygwin, select and install the following packages with Cygwin Setup: `
  curl # DAP and wget pre-req
  expat # expat XML parser for UDUnits
  gsl # GSL
  hdf5 # HDF
  netcdf # netCDF
  udunits2 # UDUnits
  ` As of 20131101 there is no Cygwin package for ANTLR, and the Cygwin netCDF package does not yet support DAP.
- Once you have installed the pre-requisites as shown above, you may then build the latest stable NCO and install it in, e.g., `/usr/local` with: `
  wget https://github.com/nco/nco/archive/5.1.4.tar.gz
  tar xvzf 5.1.4.tar.gz
  cd nco-5.1.4
  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
  make
  sudo make install
  export PATH=/usr/local/bin\:${PATH}
  export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib\:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
  `
- The CMake-equivalent to the autoconf/configure build-engine example above is: `
  cd ~/nco/cmake
  cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local
  make
  sudo make install
  ` Unlike autoconf/configure, CMake works well on MS Windows. CMake tries to find header and dependency libraries in standard locations. Override these manually with, e.g., `
  cmake .. -DNETCDF_INCLUDE:PATH=/my/netcdf/include/path -DNETCDF_LIBRARY=/my/netcdf/library/file -DHDF5_LIBRARY=/my/hdf5/library/file -DHDF5_HL_LIBRARY=/my/hdf5 high level/library/file -DSZIP_LIBRARY=/my/szip/library/file -DZLIB_LIBRARY=/my/zlib/library/file -DCURL_LIBRARY=/my/curl/library/file -DANTLR_INCLUDE:PATH=/my/antlr/include/path -DANTLR_LIBRARY:FILE=/my/antlr/library/file -DUDUNITS2_INCLUDE:PATH=/my/udunits2/include/path -DUDUNITS2_LIBRARY:FILE=/my/udunits2/library/file -DEXPAT_LIBRARY:FILE=/my/expat/library/file -DGSL_INCLUDE:PATH=/my/gsl/include/path -DGSL_LIBRARY:FILE=/my/gsl/library/file -DGSL_CBLAS_LIBRARY:FILE=/my/cblas/library/file
  `
  Please post questions about building or installing NCO to the list only after reading and attempting to follow these instructions. To indicate you have done this, include the word “bonobo” in the first sentence of your post. Yes, “bonobo”. Otherwise we will likely redirect you here. For more sophisticated build/install options, see the next section.

Still having trouble building NCO from source? Read these (much older) Build Hints

## Using NCO at UCI, NCAR, and other High Performance Computing Centers (HPCCs)

HPCCs unfortunately do not utilize modern package systems like RPMs or .debs, or do so on old OSs with no access to newer RPMs and .debs. Institution-supported executables are usually available with `module load nco`. These stable releases are often many versions (up to two years) old. Thanks to funding from external grants,

DOE, NCAR, and UCI HPCC users may find more recent pre-built NCO executableses the personal directories shown below. These are usually built from a recent tagged-version of NCO (e.g., 4.9.X-alphaY) not from the “bleeding-edge” of master which is usually untagged. One way to use these pre-built executables is to prepend them to your executable and library search paths, e.g., `export PATH="~zender/bin:${PATH}"`, `export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="~zender/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}"`

- ANL OLCF Chrysalis `chrysalis.lcrc.anl.gov`: `~ac.zender/bin_chrysalis`
- ANL ALCF Mira `mira.alcf.anl.gov`: `~zender/bin`
- ANL LCRC Blues `blues.lcrc.anl.gov`: `~zender/bin_blues`
- LLNL `acme1.llnl.gov`: `~zender1/bin`
- NCAR CISL `cheyenne.ucar.edu`: `~zender/bin`
- NERSC Cori `cori.nersc.gov`: `~zender/bin_cori`
- ORNL OLCF Andes `andes.olcf.ornl.gov`: `~zender/bin_andes`
- ORNL OLCF Titan `titan.ccs.ornl.gov`: `~zender/bin_titan`
- PNNL Compy `compy.pnl.gov`: `~zender/bin`
- UCI ESS `greenplanet.ps.uci.edu`: `~zender/bin`
- UCI HPC3 `hpc3.rcic.uci.edu`: `~zender/bin`

## Known Problems from 2021 (version 4.9.9) Onwards

Generic NCO Run-time Problems: No known generic NCO run-time problems with recent releases.

Operator-specific Run-time Problems:
- netCDF4 Renaming bugs: Unfortunately from 2007–present (April, 2021) the netCDF library (versions 4.0.0–4.8.0) has bugs and/or limitations that prevent `ncrename` (and other netCDF4-based software) from correctly renaming coordinate variables, dimensions, groups, and attributes in netCDF4 files. (To our knowledge the netCDF library calls for renaming always work well on netCDF3 files so one workaround to netCDF4 bugs is convert to netCDF3, rename, then convert back). A summary of renaming limitations associated with particular versions of netCDF4 is maintained in the online manual here. Important updates will also be posted here on the homepage. There are still known bugs with renaming features as of netCDF library version 4.8.0 (March, 2021).

Recent Platform-specific Run-time Problems: No known platform-specific problems with recent releases.

- Older Problems 2013 (version 4.2.4) through 2021 (version 4.9.9)
- Oldest Problems 2003 (version 2.7.3) through 2012 (version 4.2.3)

## People:

Current Developers (please contact us via the project forums not via email):

- Charlie Zender, Professor of Earth System Science (ESS) and of Computer Science (CS). Role: Project PI. Contributions: Core library, porting, release manager Related Research: 1. Group-Oriented Data Analysis and Distribution (GODAD). 2. Extend empirically verified analytic model (described here) for terascale data reduction of gridded datasets to account for cluster- and network-effects. 3. Enable and optimize NCO for intra-file-level parallelism using netCDF4/HDF5 parallel filesystem features. Other Interests: Atmospheric Physics, Climate Change
- Henry Butowsky, software engineer Roles: Scientific programmer Current Research: 1. Efficient complex data analysis with storage-layer constraints. 2. Develop and thread the `ncap2` interpreter. Other Interests: Compilers and interpreters.
- Pedro Vicente, software engineer, 201206—201405, then NOAA, continues as volunteer contributor

Alumni Developers:

- Dr. Scott Capps, earned Earth System Science Ph.D. (2009) with Zender at UCI, then postdoc at UCLA, then Vertum Partners, now founder/CEO Atmospheric Data Solutions
- Stephen Jenks, former Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)
- Dr. Daniel Wang: earned EECS Ph.D. (2008) with Jenks and Zender at UCI, now at SLAC
- Dr. Wenshan Wang, Roles: Postdoc Current Research: 1. Causes and implications of Greenland snowmelt. 2. Rapid evaluation and exploitation of multi-model datasets. Other Interests: Automated Weather Station workflows

Thanks also to past NCO contributors

/ Announce / Developer / Discussion / Help / Manual / Project / Source / | [ANTLR] [CF] [DIWG] [E3SM] [GSL] [netCDF] [OPeNDAP] [SWAMP] [UDUnits]