What dimensions are required in an IOAPI NetCDF file?

Question

When I do an ncdump -h on some old I/O API NetCDF files, I always get the same dimensions:

dimensions:
    TSTEP
    DATE-TIME
    LAY
    VAR
    ROW
    COL

Are these exact dimensions and names always required in an I/O API NetCDF file? (If this is the convention, why does it require TSTEP and DATE-TIME? They sound redundant.)

Answer 1

Most recent documentation seems to be included in https://github.com/cjcoats/ioapi-3.2

And there is a section called FILES: Variables, Layers, and Time Steps where You can read that "There are eight types of data currently supported by the I/O API." Without knowing Your files exactly, I cannot tell what format they should precisely correspond to.