| ACDD | Attribute Convention for Dataset Discovery |
| ASCII | American Standard Code for Information Interchange |
| attribute | HDF5 attribute or netCDF attribute |
| API | Application Program Interface |
| CCB | Configuration Change Board |
| CCR | Configuration Change Request |
| CDM | Unidata Common Data Model |
| CF | Climate and Forecast Metadata Conventions |
| CRS | Coordinate Reference System |
| COARDS | Cooperative Ocean/Atmospheric Research Data Service |
| DAAC | Distributed Active Archive Center |
| DIWG | Dataset Interoperability Working Group |
| EOSDIS | Earth Observing System Data and Information System |
| ESDS | Earth Science Data Systems |
| ESDIS | Earth Science Data and Information System |
| ESDSWG | Earth Science Data System Working Groups |
| ESIP | Federation of Earth Science Information Partners |
| ESO | ESDIS Standards Office |
| group | HDF5 group or netCDF group |
| GSFC | Goddard Space Flight Center |
| HDF | Hierarchical Data Format |
| HDF4 | Hierarchical Data Format, version 4 |
| HDF5 | Hierarchical Data Format, version 5 |
| HDF-EOS | Hierarchical Data Format - Earth Observing System |
| HDF-EOS5 | Hierarchical Data Format - Earth Observing System, version 5 |
| HPD | HDF Product Designer |
| IEEE | Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers |
| ISO | International Organization for Standardization |
| JPL | Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
| MCC | Metadata Compliance Checker |
| NASA | National Aeronautics and Space Administration |
| NaN | Not-a-Number |
| ncks | netCDF Kitchen Sink |
| NCO | netCDF Operator |
| ncpdq | netCDF Permute Dimensions Quickly |
| ncwa | netCDF Weighted Averager |
| netCDF | Network Common Data Form |
| netCDF3 | Network Common Data Form, version 3 |
| netCDF4 | Network Common Data Form, version 4 |
| NUG | NetCDF User Guide |
| OGC | Open Geospatial Consortium |
| OPeNDAP | Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol |
| RFC | Request For Comments |
| THREDDS | Thematic Real-time Environmental Distributed Data Services |
| UTC | Universal Time Coordinated (also: Coordinated Universal Time) |
| UTF-8 | Unicode Transformation Format—8-bit |
| variable | HDF5 dataset or netCDF variable |
| WGS-84 | World Geodetic System 84 |
| WKT | Well-Known Text |
| XML | Extensible Markup Language |
