No variable or dimension names are standardized by this convention. Instead we follow the lead of the NUG and standardize only the names of attributes and some of the values taken by those attributes. The overview provided in this section will be followed with more complete descriptions in following sections. Appendix A, Attributes contains a summary of all the attributes used in this convention.

We recommend that the NUG defined attribute Conventions be given the string value "CF-1.2" "CF-1.3" to identify datasets that conform to these conventions.

The general description of a file's contents should be contained in the following attributes: title, history, institution, source, comment and references (Section 2.6.2, “Description of file contents”). For backwards compatibility with COARDS none of these attributes is required, but their use is recommended to provide human readable documentation of the file contents.

Each variable in a netCDF file has an associated description which is provided by the attributes units, long_name, and standard_name. The units, and long_name attributes are defined in the NUG and the standard_name attribute is defined in this document.

The units attribute is required for all variables that represent dimensional quantities (except for boundary variables defined in Section 7.1, “Cell Boundaries”. The values of the units attributes are character strings that are recognized by UNIDATA's Udunits package [UDUNITS], (with exceptions allowed as discussed in Section 3.1, “Units”).

The long_name and standard_name attributes are used to describe the content of each variable. For backwards compatibility with COARDS neither is required, but use of at least one of them is strongly recommended. The use of standard names will facilitate the exchange of climate and forecast data by providing unambiguous identification of variables most commonly analyzed.

Four types of coordinates receive special treatment by these conventions: latitude, longitude, vertical, and time. Every variable must have associated metadata that allows identification of each such coordinate that is relevant. Two independent parts of the convention allow this to be done. There are conventions that identify the variables that contain the coordinate data, and there are conventions that identify the type of coordinate represented by that data.

There are two methods used to identify variables that contain coordinate data. The first is to use the NUG-defined "coordinate variables." The use of coordinate variables is required for all dimensions that correspond to one dimensional space or time coordinates. In cases where coordinate variables are not applicable, the variables containing coordinate data are identified by the coordinates attribute.

Once the variables containing coordinate data are identified, further conventions are required to determine the type of coordinate represented by each of these variables. Latitude, longitude, and time coordinates are identified solely by the value of their units attribute. Vertical coordinates with units of pressure may also be identified by the units attribute. Other vertical coordinates must use the attribute positive which determines whether the direction of increasing coordinate value is up or down. Because identification of a coordinate type by its units involves the use of an external software package [UDUNITS], we provide the optional attribute axis for a direct identification of coordinates that correspond to latitude, longitude, vertical, or time axes.

Latitude, longitude, and time are defined by internationally recognized standards, and hence, identifying the coordinates of these types is sufficient to locate data values uniquely with respect to time and a point on the earth's surface. On the other hand identifying the vertical coordinate is not necessarily sufficient to locate a data value vertically with respect to the earth's surface. In particular a model may output data on the dimensionless vertical coordinate used in its mathematical formulation. To achieve the goal of being able to spatially locate all data values, this convention includes the definitions of common dimensionless vertical coordinates in Appendix D, Dimensionless Vertical Coordinates. These definitions provide a mapping between the dimensionless coordinate values and dimensional values that can be uniquely located with respect to a point on the earth's surface. The definitions are associated with a coordinate variable via the standard_name and formula_terms attributes. For backwards compatibility with COARDS use of these attributes is not required, but is strongly recommended.

It is often the case that data values are not representative of single points in time and/or space, but rather of intervals or multidimensional cells. This convention defines a bounds attribute to specify the extent of intervals or cells. When data that is representative of cells can be described by simple statistical methods, those methods can be indicated using the cell_methods attribute. An important application of this attribute is to describe climatological and diurnal statistics.

Methods for reducing the total volume of data include both packing and compression. Packing reduces the data volume by reducing the precision of the stored numbers. It is implemented using the attributes add_offset and scale_factor which are defined in the NUG. Compression on the other hand loses no precision, but reduces the volume by not storing missing data. The attribute compress is defined for this purpose.