Read a remote NetCDF file over ssh in Python, using netCDF4

Question

How can I read a NetCDF file remotely with Python?

It is easy to read a file from a server with ssh using Python , but how can I replace the command sftp_client.open() by something like netCDF4.Dataset() to store that result into a variable?

In the following example, I am downloading locally and temporarily the file I'd like to read remotely:

import os
import paramiko
import netCDF4

remotefile = 'pathtoremotefile'
localfile = 'pathtolocaltmpfile'

ssh_client = paramiko.SSHClient()
ssh_client.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy())
ssh_client.connect('myserver', username="myname", password="mypswd")

sftp_client = ssh_client.open_sftp()

# Something similar than this but for a NetCDF file? 
# Or how to use remote_file in netCDF4 afterwards?
# remote_file = sftp_client.open(remotefile)

# Here, I just download it to manipulate it locally...
sftp_client.get(remotefile, localfile)

try:
    ncfile = netCDF4.Dataset(localfile)
    # Operations...

finally:
    sftp_client.close()
    ssh_client.close()
    os.remove(localfile)

Answer 1

you can mount locally the remote ssh using sshfs and open it as a localfile

import os
import netCDF4
localfile = 'pathtolocalmountpoint/relativepathtofile'
try:
  ncfile = netCDF4.Dataset(localfile)