NetCDF Climate Data Processor

Build a climate data processing utility that creates, reads, and manages netCDF files for storing temperature measurements from multiple weather stations.

Requirements

File Creation

Create netCDF files with:

• An unlimited "time" dimension for time series data
• A fixed-size "station" dimension for weather station identifiers
• A "temperature" variable with shape (time, station) to store measurements
• Global metadata attributes: "title" and "institution"

File Reading

Read existing netCDF files to:

• Extract global metadata attributes
• Query dimension sizes
• Access dimension and attribute information

File Appending

Append data to existing files:

• Open files in append mode ('a')
• Write new measurements to existing variables
• Flush changes to ensure data persistence

Resource Management

• Use context managers (with statements) for all file operations
• Files must be properly closed after operations complete

Test Cases

• Create a new netCDF file with time and station dimensions, verify the file exists and can be reopened @test
• Open an existing file in read mode and extract its global title attribute @test
• Open a file in append mode, add data to an unlimited dimension, and verify the dimension size increased @test
• Verify that using a file as a context manager properly closes the file after the block exits @test

Implementation

@generates

API

def create_climate_file(filepath, num_stations):
    """
    Create a new netCDF file for climate data storage.

    Args:
        filepath: Path where the netCDF file should be created
        num_stations: Number of weather stations (fixed dimension size)

    Returns:
        None (file is created and closed)
    """
    pass

def read_file_metadata(filepath):
    """
    Read metadata from an existing netCDF file.

    Args:
        filepath: Path to the netCDF file

    Returns:
        dict: Dictionary containing:
            - 'title': Global title attribute
            - 'time_size': Current size of time dimension
            - 'station_size': Size of station dimension
    """
    pass

def append_measurements(filepath, temperature_data):
    """
    Append new temperature measurements to an existing file.

    Args:
        filepath: Path to the netCDF file
        temperature_data: List or array of temperature values to append

    Returns:
        int: New size of the time dimension after append
    """
    pass

Dependencies { .dependencies }

h5netcdf { .dependency }

Provides netCDF4 file format access via h5py.