How to Create and FTP a netCDF File Subset

  1. Connect our gridded data page with your favorite web browser:
    https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/
  2. Select the data set of interest from the menu.
  3. Find the variable with characteristics, such as temporal frequency and statistic, and click on the icon for Plot/Subset (key is below the menu).
  4. This will open a new tab or window (depending on browser settings).
  5. This page has a plot on the right and a form to the left. The top part will allow temporal subsetting when one clicks on "Create Composite". Scrolling the form sub-window down to "Region:" and selecting "Custom" from that menu will bring up areal subsetting.
  6. The plot updates with each change to the form controls. Below the plot is a link for downloading the subset. The plot displayed is a composite, but the subset contains all the time steps in the time-range.
  7. The file is in NetCDF format, which is widely understood by tools popular in climate analysis; see:
    https://psl.noaa.gov/data/help/tools.html

NOTE: If you make a plot it will be the AVERAGE of the time steps (and other ranges like the levels in the z direction), but the file contains the individual time steps.

If you select the variable U-wind or V-wind for plotting, the plot is the combined wind vector plot. However, the subset file will only contain the selected variable.