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Zarr Overview:

Zarr is one of these relatively newly adopted data formats specifically for a relatively new cloud-based data format specifically for improving access to N-Dimensional arrays. It is an effective way to store large N-dimensional data in the cloud and access the data in predefined chunks.  Zarr can be viewed as the cloud based version of HDF5/NetCDF files as it follows a similar data model.  Zarr does not come in a single file as NetCDF or HDF5 does but as a directory with chunks of data in compressed binary files and metadata describing the binary content in external JSON files.

The semantic mapping from the NetCDF Data Model to Zarr Data Model is as follows:

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Zarr is a generic data format for Scientific Array Data.  Groups have found ways to store spatial metadata within the existing structure, however since this is not a single standardized method, users would have to create custom tools to retrieve those fields.  There is a GeoZarr Specification to provide a geospatial extension to the Zarr data format. GeoZarr can store multidimensional georeferenced earth observation data.

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