Hello -
Thanks for the explanation. I was working with one file at a time and thus didn't see the problem. I'm able to replicate this now.
It looks like this came along with the field name changes. If you aggregate the grid files together into one data source using the 'Aggregate Grids By Time' data type, you can notice some differences in the metadata between 1.0beta5 and 1.5. To see the metadata, load the aggregated data source, right-click on the data source in the Field Selector and choose Properties. In this Properties window, go to the Metadata tab.
In 1.0beta5, the only time dimension in the metadata is 'time'. All of the fields have this time dimension. For example:
float Total_cloud_cover_high_cloud(time=17, lat=361, lon=720)
In 1.5, there are two dimensions in the metadata, 'time' and 'time1'. All of the fields that are averages over a time period use 'time1' instead of 'time'. For example:
float Total_cloud_cover_high_cloud_3_Hour_Average(time1=1, lat=361, lon=720);
Notice how time= in 1.0beta5 has a length of 17, and time1 in 1.5 has a length of only 1. This is why you can't get loops of the average fields to display in McV using 'Aggregate Grids By Time', since this is looking for a dimension called 'time' in the fields.
I haven't worked through this myself, but you may be able to create a wrapper file using NcML aggregation, defining 'time1' as the dimension to aggregate with. See
NcML Aggregation for more info.
I will send an email to NetCDF support (at Unidata) to try finding out why this change was made. Investigating this data in NetCDF ToolsUI shows that this 'time1' dimension was introduced in NetCDF 4.2.
Thanks -
Bob