convert a netcdf time variable to an R date object

Question

I have a netcdf file with a timeseries and the time variable has the following typical metadata:

    double time(time) ;
            time:standard_name = \"t         


        

Answer 1

I couldn't get @AF7's function to work with my files so I wrote my own. The function below creates a POSIXct vector of dates, for which the start date, time interval, unit and length are read from the nc file. It works with nc files of many (but probably not every...) shapes or forms.

 ncdate <- function(nc) {
    ncdims <- names(nc$dim) #Extract dimension names
    timevar <- ncdims[which(ncdims %in% c("time", "Time", "datetime", "Datetime",
                                          "date", "Date"))[1]] # Pick the time dimension
    ntstep <-nc$dim[[timevar]]$len
    tm <- ncvar_get(nc, timevar) # Extract the timestep count
    tunits <- ncatt_get(nc, timevar, "units") # Extract the long name of units
    tspace <- tm[2] - tm[1] # Calculate time period between two timesteps, for the "by" argument 
    tstr <- strsplit(tunits$value, " ") # Extract string components of the time unit
    a<-unlist(tstr[1]) # Isolate the unit .i.e. seconds, hours, days etc.
    uname <- a[which(a %in% c("seconds","hours","days"))[1]] # Check unit
    startd <- as.POSIXct(gsub(paste(uname,'since '),'',tunits$value),format="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S") ## Extract the start / origin date
    tmulti <- 3600 # Declare hourly multiplier for date
    if (uname == "days") tmulti =86400 # Declare daily multiplier for date
    ## Rename "seconds" to "secs" for "by" argument and change the multiplier.
    if (uname == "seconds") {
        uname <- "secs"
        tmulti <- 1 }
    byt <- paste(tspace,uname) # Define the "by" argument
    if (byt == "0.0416666679084301 days") { ## If the unit is "days" but the "by" interval is in hours
    byt= "1 hour"                       ## R won't understand "by < 1" so change by and unit to hour.
    uname = "hours"}
    datev <- seq(from=as.POSIXct(startd+tm[1]*tmulti),by= byt, units=uname,length=ntstep)
}

Edit

To address the flaw highlighted by @AF7's comment that the above code would only work for regularly spaced files, datev could be calculated as

 datev <- as.POSIXct(tm*tmulti,origin=startd)