Earthdata Forum

I have downloaded netCDF files with chlorophyl A data from the SeaWIFS (https://oceandata.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/SeaWiFS/Binned/Annual/CHL/) as such:
S20100012010365.L3b_YR_CHL.nc
S20100012010365.L3b_YR_CHL.nc

How can I open the nc files? ArcGis nor R are working.
I have about 650 coral reef sites around the world for which I would like to find the chlorophyl values for.

I have also tried SeaDAS, but when I try to import the netCDF files I get the following error: "Cannot decode the selected product file"

Can anyone help? Thank you.

The .L3b_YR_CHL.nc files are level-3 binned data (see IOCCG Report 4 for details).  Most 3rd party tools that read NetCDF files expect gridded data following the CF (metadata) conventions, which would be mapped (.L3m_YR_CHL.nc) data.  If you are able to use the OCSSW processing system, the l3bindump command-line tool can extract values from binned files for the bin containing a given point location, a disk (center location and radius), or box.

The main advantage of binned data is that each level-2 pixel gets the same weighting in the result so can provide meaningful variances for your statistics.