[gdal-dev] [mbsystem] [GMT4] Messy little problem between GMT4, GDAL 1.9.2 and ArcGIS 10

John Helly hellyj at ucsd.edu
Mon May 6 11:57:49 PDT 2013


Hi Kurt.
Thanks for the reply.

You are correct that mbgrid outputs a GMT netCDF file.  I was running 
gdal_translate to overcome a weirdness that may no longer exist but 
previously caused the output to be reflected when displayed in GIS 
tools.  This was due to a difference between GDAL utilities and the GMT 
tools in indexing the data (as I recall).

Geotiffs are a nice alternative.  I was just used to using netCDF.

Joaquim Luis explained the problem as due to gdal using an old GMT3 
format (below)

 >>
John,

No wonder the headers are different. The gdal_translate -of GMT converts 
the grid into the old-old-old GMT3 version netCDF that was not CF 
compliant. And if you want to do that, no need to call gdal_translate, 
all you need is to append '=cf' to grid's name of mbgrid command (I'm 
assuming that mbgrid delegates all grid writing work to GMT).

In summary, I don't see any problem here as it's very unlikely that Arc 
will be able to read that old-old-old netCDF variant (unless it lets  
GDAL do all the work)

Joaquim
 >>


J.

On 5/5/13 5:39 PM, Kurt Schwehr wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> - It's Sunday so the brain isn't really engaged, but doesn't mbgrid 
> output a gmt grd file?  (your dump shows that)  Why are you running 
> gdal_translate when your issue was with qgis/gdal and your destination 
> is ArcGIS?
>
> - gdal 1.10.0 is just out.  Before trying anything else, you might try 
> upgrading to that.
>
> - Why not write a geotif from gdal?  You get the option of LZW 
> compression then and a lot more tools can read geotif than can read 
> gmt netcdf grids... it's also a much more tested path through gdal. 
>  Since I never seem to remember how to do compress and I always seem 
> monstrous amounts of files... for the record, to LZW compress a 
> geotif, add this:
>    -co "COMPRESS=LZW"
>
> - are you seeing the same things from gdalinfo on the output as the 
> input? (e.g. is gdal being self consistent)
>
> - you never mentioned what options you were passing to gdal_translate. 
>  One of your options could be the issue.
>
> -kurt
>
> On May 5, 2013, at 2:04 PM, John Helly <hellyj at ucsd.edu 
> <mailto:hellyj at ucsd.edu>> wrote:
>
>> Hi.
>>
>> A few years ago I had a problem with GMT/GDAL interactions such that 
>> the GMT netCDF files were reflected when read into Qgis (for 
>> example). This was worked around by running it through 
>> 'gdal_translate -of GMT'.  There was also a discussion about this 
>> being a bug in something in GDAL (since Qgis was using GDAL if I 
>> remember correctly) that was supposed to have been fixed in some 
>> version (obviously don't remember the details). At any rate, it 
>> stopped being a problem for me but now something else is causing a 
>> problem in files that have the following workflow:
>>
>> --> mbgrid (from MB-System) --> gdal_translate -of GMT --> ArcGIS 
>> netCDF reader
>>
>> Now I find that gdal_translate appears to be changing the header in a 
>> way such that ArcGIS cannot read the netCDF. The first 'ncdump -h' 
>> below is what the header looks like before running through 
>> gdal_translate and the second one is after gdal_translate.
>>
>> I'm sending this note to MB-System, GMT and GDAL groups since it 
>> seems like an issue of import to all three.  Any thoughts on this?
>>
>> J.
>>
>> =======================================Output from mbgrid before 
>> gdal_translate ==================================================
>> ncdump -h MCBCP_BeachModel_UTM11N_Baseline.grdclip.nc
>> netcdf MCBCP_BeachModel_UTM11N_Baseline.grdclip {
>> dimensions:
>>     x = 12626 ;
>>     y = 12251 ;
>> variables:
>>     double x(x) ;
>>         x:long_name = "Easting (meters)" ;
>>         x:actual_range = 444057.827834802, 469309.046567392 ;
>>     double y(y) ;
>>         y:long_name = "Northing (meters)" ;
>>         y:actual_range = 3670183.00468016, 3694684.53612513 ;
>>     float z(y, x) ;
>>         z:long_name = "Topography (m)" ;
>>         z:_FillValue = NaNf ;
>>         z:actual_range = -1995.541015625, 599.818359375 ;
>>
>> // global attributes:
>>         :Conventions = "COARDS/CF-1.0" ;
>>         :title = "Topography Grid" ;
>>         :history = "grdclip -V 
>> /media/EXT4_Projects_01/SLR_Data/level1/MCBCP/Basemap/MCBCP_BeachModel_UTM11N_Baseline.grd 
>> -G/media/EXT4_Projects_01/SLR_Data/level1/MCBCP/Basemap/MCBCP_BeachModel_UTM11N_Baseline.grdclip.nc 
>> -Sa600/NaN -Sb-2000/NaN" ;
>>         :description = "\n",
>>             "\tProjection: UTM11N\n",
>>             "\tGrid created by mbgrid\n",
>>             "\tMB-system Version 5.3.1982\n",
>>             "\tRun by <hellyj> on <StonestepsLinux> at <Thu Apr 25 
>> 19:44:41 2013>" ;
>>         :GMT_version = "4.5.9_r9909 [64-bit]" ;
>> }
>> =====================================Output from mbgrid after 
>> gdal_translate ====================================================
>> ncdump -h MCBCP_BeachModel_UTM11N_Baseline.grdclip.flipped.nc
>> netcdf MCBCP_BeachModel_UTM11N_Baseline.grdclip.flipped {
>> dimensions:
>>     side = 2 ;
>>     xysize = 154681126 ;
>> variables:
>>     double x_range(side) ;
>>         x_range:units = "meters" ;
>>     double y_range(side) ;
>>         y_range:units = "meters" ;
>>     double z_range(side) ;
>>         z_range:units = "meters" ;
>>     double spacing(side) ;
>>     int dimension(side) ;
>>     float z(xysize) ;
>>         z:scale_factor = 1. ;
>>         z:add_offset = 0. ;
>>         z:node_offset = 1 ;
>>
>> // global attributes:
>>         :title = "" ;
>>         :source = "" ;
>> }
>>
>> -- 
>> John Helly, University of California, San Diego / San Diego Supercomputer Center / Scripps Institution of Oceanography / 760 840 8660 mobile / stonesteps (Skype) / stonesteps7 (iChat) /http://www.sdsc.edu/~hellyj
>

-- 
John Helly, University of California, San Diego / San Diego Supercomputer Center / Scripps Institution of Oceanography / 760 840 8660 mobile / stonesteps (Skype) / stonesteps7 (iChat) / http://www.sdsc.edu/~hellyj

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