2011 - 08 - 10 --- Rik Noorlandt deflation was done using ncotools: http://nco.sourceforge.net/#Binaries (Using the cygwin version, with increased virtual memory of cygwin) The produced files are not directly compatible with matlab 2010b, so another script is used, made by John Evans fix_creation_order_issue.m The email John Evans send me: Hi Rik, Version 4 is actually supported in R2010b. The statement you found about 3.6.2 must be an error. The hdf5 attribute issue that your are running into is something that's come to my attention recently. I'm going to guess that your NCO tool was compiled against a 4.1.x version of the netcdf library? It's possible for versions 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 to create files that 4.0.1 clients (MATLAB R2010b and R2011a) can't read. Those library versions can attach attributes to netcdf files that the 4.0.1 library won't accept. There is a tentative workaround, if you would like to try it. I've attached a script that uses the HDF5 library only to delete those attributes. As far as I can tell, the net effect of this is to just change the order in the listing of certain dimension. If you use the script, you should be able to read the file again with R2010b, but you should check it very carefully to see if everything looks ok. Let me know how it goes.