The NJ toolbox (njTBX) was developed to make it easier for Matlab© users to harness the power of the NetCDF-Java Library from Unidata.

njTBX does more than just read Netcdf files!

By implementing a Common Data Model (a generalization of the NetCDF, OpenDAP and HDF5 data models) it can read both local and remote NetCDF-3 and NetCDF-4 files, data from OPeNDAP and ADDE servers, as well as GRIB, GRIB2, HDF4, HDF5, BUFR, URF and TDWR files. It can also read “virtual datasets” constructed using the NetCDF Markup Language. Thus njTBX complements and extends both the older ncmex-based toolkits as well as the newer Matlab 2008b+ built-in toolbox for NetCDF.

NetCDF-Java also has specialized high level methods for data that can be understood as belonging to a specific “Scientific Feature Type”, such as “grid”, “radial”, “trajectory” and “point” data. These high level methods can be used, for example, to return geospatial coordinate data (lon, lat, z and time) from “grid data” (uniform, rectilinear, or curvilinear horizontal coordinates, and fixed level or terrain-following vertical coordinates), which allows access to a variety of local and remote bathymetry, remote sensing, atmospheric and oceanic modeling results.

njTBX uses only Java and M-files, thus should work on any version of Matlab that supports Java (Matlab 6.5 and later) and on any platform.