Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Applications Using Hdf and Hdf5

Since 1998, NCSA has developed a more general and robust data format, called HDF5, which was designed to support the future demands of Earth Science, such as large data storage, performance, and flexibility. The NCSA HDF group encourages applications to use HDF5 for better performance and maintenance. See extend abstract P2.42 for more information about HDF5. In summary, HDF5 has the following features that make its use attractive for many important atmospheric science applications. 1) Flexible data model 2) Open-source, free software 3) Portability 4) Emphasis on performance • MPIIO support • Improved sub-setting • In-memory compression • Alternative storage models