earthkit-data: NetCDF - ECMWF internal earthkit training, March 2026

In this notebook you will see how to:

convert NetCDF to Xarray
convert NetCDF to a fieldlist

First we read some NetCDF from the remote samples with from_source(). The returned object provides some basic information but its primary goal is to convert the data into the required representation for further work. The actual data loading is deferred, as much as possible, until the data is converted into a given type.

import earthkit.data as ekd

d = ekd.from_source("sample", "era5_tquv_pl_subarea.nc")
d

d.available_types

Conversion to Xarray¶

The easiest way to work with NetCDF data is to convert it into Xarray.

d.to_xarray()

Conversion to fieldlist¶

When the data stucture allows it it is also possible to load NetCDF data into a fieldlist.

fl = d.to_fieldlist()
len(fl)

fl.head()

f = fl[0]
f