Converting to pandas datetime data does not match format

Question

I have a.netcdf dataset and I want to convert the time to pandas datetime format. The entries look like this:

<xarray.DataArray 'time' ()>
array(19810101.47916667)
Coordinates:
    time     float64 1.981e+07
Attributes:
    axis:           T
    calendar:       proleptic_gregorian
    standard_name:  time
    units:          day as %Y%m%d.%f

When I try to convert the data like this

pd.to_datetime(19810101.47916667,format='%Y%m%d.%f')

I get the error "time data '19810101' does not match format '%Y%m%d.%f' (match)". I fail to undertand what exactly is going wrong here. Especially since this is exactly the format mentioned in the.netcdf data (as you can see above). Can someone tell me what I am missing?

Answer 1

You simply need to make your date value a string as below:

pd.to_datetime("19810101.47916667",format='%Y%m%d.%f'