Reading 1-D Variables in WRF NetCDF files with GDAL python

Question

My question is simple.
With an wrfout file "out.nc" for example.
The file contain Geo2D, Geo3D and 1D variables.

Using GDAL package in Python 2.7, I can extract the Geo2D variables easily like this:

## T2 is 2-d variable means temperature 2 m above the ground
temp = gdal.Open('NETCDF:"'+"out.nc"+'":T2')          

But when I want to use this code to extract 1d array, it failed.

## Time is 1-d array represent the timeseries throught the simulation period
time = gdal.Open('NETCDF:"'+"out.nc"+'":Time')       

Nothing happened! Wish some one offer some advice to read any-dimension of WRF output variables easyily!

Answer 1

You can also use the NetCDF reader in scipy.io:

import scipy.io.netcdf as nc

# Open a netcdf file object and assign the data values to a variable
time = nc.netcdf_file('out.nc', 'r').variables['Time'][:]

It has the benefit of scipy being a very popular and widely installed package, while working similar to opening files in some respects.