[Geotiff] Help with netCDF (w/ projection) to geoTiff

[Jeff Bullard]

My data from NOAA's NDFD is in netCDF format.  I'm trying to serve some
data with Mapserver.  Two questions:

1.  Should I first convert this data to GeoTiff, as recommended in
Mapserver documentation?

2.  How do I convert this to GeoTiff?  It is complicated due to a
projection that has been applied.  I tried gdal_translate -b 1
conus_3.nc ouput.tif  but it didn't work:  Warning 1:
xdim/x/lon/longitude or ydim/y/lat/latitude variable(s) not found!

Here is portion of ncdump of my data:

$ncdump -h conus_3.nc

netcdf conus_3 {
dimensions:
        ProjectionHr = UNLIMITED ; // (1 currently)
        YCells = 553 ;
        XCells = 825 ;
variables:
        char MapProjection ;
                MapProjection:long_name = "MapProjection" ;
                MapProjection:grid_mapping_name =
"polar_stereographic" ;
                MapProjection:EarthShape = "sphere" ;
                MapProjection:EarthRadius_KM = 6371.2 ;
                MapProjection:EarthRadius = "6371.200000 km" ;
                MapProjection:standard_parallel = 90. ;
                MapProjection:longitude_of_central_meridian = -150. ;
                MapProjection:latitude_of_projection_origin = 90. ;
                MapProjection:LowerLeftLatitude = 40.530101 ;
                MapProjection:LowerLeftLongitude = -178.571 ;
        double YCells(YCells) ;
                YCells:units = "m" ;
                YCells:long_name = "y coordinate of projection" ;
                YCells:standard_name = "projection_y_coordinate" ;
                YCells:grid_spacing = "5953.125000 m" ;
                YCells:TrueGridLength_Latitude = 60. ;
                YCells:_CoordinateAxisType = "GeoY" ;
        double XCells(XCells) ;
                XCells:units = "m" ;
                XCells:long_name = "x coordinate of projection" ;
                XCells:standard_name = "projection_x_coordinate" ;
                XCells:grid_spacing = "5953.125000 m" ;
                XCells:TrueGridLength_Latitude = 60. ;
                XCells:_CoordinateAxisType = "GeoX" ;
        float longitude(YCells, XCells) ;
                longitude:long_name = "longitude coordinate" ;
                longitude:units = "degrees_east" ;
                longitude:precision = 6 ;
                longitude:grid_mapping = "MapProjection" ;
                longitude:standard_name = "longitude" ;
                longitude:_CoordinateAxisType = "Lon" ;
        float latitude(YCells, XCells) ;
                latitude:long_name = "latitude coordinate" ;
                latitude:units = "degrees_north" ;
                latitude:precision = 6 ;
                latitude:grid_mapping = "MapProjection" ;
                latitude:standard_name = "latitude" ;
                latitude:_CoordinateAxisType = "Lat" ;
        float MaxT_SFC(ProjectionHr, YCells, XCells) ;
                MaxT_SFC:long_name = "Maximum Temperature" ;
                MaxT_SFC:units = "F" ;
                MaxT_SFC:coordinates = "longitude latitude" ;
                MaxT_SFC:ReferenceTime = 1164520800 ;
                MaxT_SFC:ReferenceTimeString = "2006-11-26 06:00:00
00:00" ;
                MaxT_SFC:gridType = "SCALAR" ;
                MaxT_SFC:level = "SFC" ;