netCDF 4 Compatibility Issues
The files on this site are in netCDF 4 format, created with netCDF 4.1.1. If you have difficulty opening files downloaded from this site, you may need to update your reading software. Some software that can open netCDF 4 files fails to open files made with netCDF 4.1.1.
There is a backwards compatibility issue with netCDF4/HDF5. To read files created with netCDF 4.1.1, you will need software that was built against NetCDF 4.1.1 and HDF5 1.8.4-patch1 (or newer).
You can find further details about this issue in the discussion at the NCAR command language (NCL) user's group.
Known good versions include
IDL: version 7.1.1
NCL: version 5.2.0
Opengrads: version 2.0.a8.oga.1