Summary

This document describes some simple tools that are available for the reading of netCDF files found in the WOCE Global Data Resource Version 3. These tools allow the netCDF files to be read quickly and easily and to be manipulated by many common analysis packages such as ncBrowse and ferret  in addition to traditional languages such as Fortran and C/C++ and Java. Because netCDF format is now used for all of the different data products on the WOCE Global Data V3.0, the skills required to read one data set are the same as those needed to read all the others data sets. This reduces the hurdles involved in reading all the different data sets and allows the analyst to concentrate on the interpretation of the observations from many different sources. Because the netCDF files are self-describing, the attributes of each variable (such as units) and name are defined in the data set (along with other information such as the source, creation date, investigator, position, etc etc). This documentation preserves much of the original information in the data set reducing the chance of errors occurring during analysis.