Delivering CF-netCDF Coverages via Standard Protocols: a WCS Extension Standard

The CF-netCDF data format has been proposed as a standard extension to the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) WCS (Web Coverage Service) core specification. The WCS core specification defines a protocol for describing and requesting grid (or "simple") coverages but leaves various details, including defining response encoding formats, for extension standards. The CF-netCDF format is widely used in the weather, climate, and ocean modeling community and the need for CF-netCDF as a supported WCS format was a key conlusion of the GALEON (Geo-interface for Air, Land, Environment, Ocean NetCDF) OGC Interoperability Experiment. This presentation outlines the key aspects of the proposed CF-netCDF encoding extension standard. The proposed extension consists of a mapping of the CF-netCDF data model (as embodied in Unidata's Common Data Model) to the ISO 19123 coverage specification, example WCS responses to describeCoverage and getCoverage requests for CF-netCDF encoded coverages as well as pointers to definitive documentation, examples, and implementations.