NCL workshop to be held 25-29 May 2004

An NCL vector plot showing zonal wind

T he next workshop on the NCAR Command Language (NCL) will be offered at NCAR's Corporate Technical Training Center (CTTC) from 25–29 May 2004.

NCL is a programming language designed specifically for the analysis and visualization of scientific data.

The workshop, which is free, will cover the following topics:

• Introduction to the netCDF data model
• Language basics
• File IO
• Data processing
• Graphics
• File handling using the netCDF operators (NCO)

The workshop consist of morning lectures and afternoon exercises in which the students are encouraged to bring their own data. During lab periods, instructors help students put to use the concepts mentioned in the lectures.

All lab time is optional, and many students come and go as their schedules permit.

Students are expected to be proficient in a major interpreted (e.g. IDL or MATLAB) or non-interpreted (e.g. Fortran or C) computer language, and understand UNIX.

If you or your graduate students use NCAR Community Climate System Model (CCSM) data and would like an option for your data processing and visualization needs, it is highly recommend that you attend a workshop. If you routinely deal with netCDF, GRIB, or HDF data, NCL may make your processing needs simpler.

For more information, contact Dennis Shea (303-497-1361, shea@ucar.edu).