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| 20.1 | Some General Advice for Data Providers A general list of maxims for data providers. | 
| 20.2 | Purpose of Conventions Why are conventions needed, if we have standard formats? | 
| 20.3 | Conventions Data providers should know and use existing conventions, when practical. | 
| 20.4 | Coordinate Systems Spatial and temporal location of data are supported by use of coordinate systems. | 
| 20.5 | Variable Grouping How you group data into variables can determine whether common analysis and visualization software can effectively use the data. | 
| 20.6 | Variable Attributes Conventional variable attributes supply necessary metadata. | 
| 20.7 | Calendar Date and Time Represent calendar dates and times with standards and conventions. | 
| 20.8 | Packed Data Values Conventions for packed netCDF data use a smaller data type to save space for low-precision data, for example, packing doubles into shorts. | 
| 20.9 | Missing Data Values To indicate that data values are missing, invalid, or not written, special values are conventionally used. | 
| 20.10 | Summary Things to remember about netCDF best practices. |