The conventions for climate and forecast (CF) metadata are designed to promote the processing and sharing of files created with the NetCDF API. The conventions define metadata that provide a definitive description of what the data in each variable represents, and the spatial and temporal properties of the data. This enables users of data from different sources to decide which quantities are comparable, and facilitates building applications with powerful extraction, regridding, and display capabilities.

The CF conventions generalize and extend the COARDS conventions.

Here are the slides for a talk that provides an overview of CF. An expository version of this talk is in this article.

Discussion about CF Metadata takes place in two formats:

1. CF Metadata Trac, and
   
2. cf-metadata mailing list.

Quick Links

• CF Conventions Document (v1.2)
• CF Standard Name Table
• CF Metadata Trac
  
• cf-metadata Mailing List Archives
• CF Conformance Requirements & Recommendations
  
• CF Compliance Checker