Convert NetCDF file to CSV or text using Python

Question

I'm trying to convert a netCDF file to either a CSV or text file using Python. I have read this post but I am still missing a step (I'm new to Python). It's a dataset including latitude, longitude, time and precipitation data.

This is my code so far:

import netCDF4
import pandas as pd

precip_nc_file = 'file_path'
nc = netCDF4.Dataset(precip_nc_file, mode='r')

nc.variables.keys()

lat = nc.variables['lat'][:]
lon = nc.variables['lon'][:]
time_var = nc.variables['time']
dtime = netCDF4.num2date(time_var[:],time_var.units)
precip = nc.variables['precip'][:]

I am not sure how to proceed from here, though I understand it's a matter of creating a dataframe with pandas.

Answer 1

I think pandas.Series should work for you to create a CSV with time, lat,lon,precip.

import netCDF4
import pandas as pd

precip_nc_file = 'file_path'
nc = netCDF4.Dataset(precip_nc_file, mode='r')

nc.variables.keys()

lat = nc.variables['lat'][:]
lon = nc.variables['lon'][:]
time_var = nc.variables['time']
dtime = netCDF4.num2date(time_var[:],time_var.units)
precip = nc.variables['precip'][:]

# a pandas.Series designed for time series of a 2D lat,lon grid
precip_ts = pd.Series(precip, index=dtime) 

precip_ts.to_csv('precip.csv',index=True, header=True)

Answer 2

import xarray as xr

nc = xr.open_dataset('file_path')
nc.precip.to_dataframe().to_csv('precip.csv')