World Meteorological Organization GRIB (GRIdded Binary) Reader

Licensing options for this format begin with FME Professional Edition.

The World Meteorological Organization GRIB (GRIdded Binary) Reader allows FME to access data in the GRIB format.

Overview

GRIB is a file format designed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) for storing and transmitting gridded meteorological data, such as Numerical Weather Prediction model output.

One GRIB file may contain multiple “messages,” each of which records a particular variable at a particular time (for example, temperature, pressure, precipitation, wind speed, etc.). FME generates a single raster feature per GRIB file, where each message is represented as a band.

Three editions of GRIB have been issued by the WMO. FME supports reading GRIB Edition 1 and GRIB Edition 2. GRIB Edition 0 is obsolete and not supported by FME.

Note the following known limitations of the GRIB reader:

  • The GRIB format supports up to two NoData values per band. FME will honor the first NoData value from the first band, and apply this to all bands on the raster.
  • Different messages in a GRIB file may have different dimensions. However, since messages are treated as bands, the dimensions and location of all messages will be forced to match those of the first message.
  • Irregular grids (that is, grids that have a different number of cells per row) cannot be read.