# xarray.DataArray.to_netcdf

`DataArray.``to_netcdf`(*args, **kwargs)

  Write DataArray contents to a netCDF file.

  Parameters:

  path : str or Path, optional

  > Path to which to save this dataset. If no path is provided, this function returns the resulting netCDF file as a bytes object; in this case, we need to use scipy.io.netcdf, which does not support netCDF version 4 (the default format becomes NETCDF3_64BIT).

  mode : {‘w’, ‘a’}, optional

  > Write (‘w’) or append (‘a’) mode. If mode=’w’, any existing file at this location will be overwritten.

  format : {‘NETCDF4’, ‘NETCDF4_CLASSIC’, ‘NETCDF3_64BIT’,

  > > ‘NETCDF3_CLASSIC’}, optional

  > File format for the resulting netCDF file:

  > - NETCDF4: Data is stored in an HDF5 file, using netCDF4 API features.
  > - NETCDF4_CLASSIC: Data is stored in an HDF5 file, using only netCDF 3 compatible API features.
  > - NETCDF3_64BIT: 64-bit offset version of the netCDF 3 file format, which fully supports 2+ GB files, but is only compatible with clients linked against netCDF version 3.6.0 or later.
  > - NETCDF3_CLASSIC: The classic netCDF 3 file format. It does not handle 2+ GB files very well.

  > All formats are supported by the netCDF4-python library. scipy.io.netcdf only supports the last two formats.

  > The default format is NETCDF4 if you are saving a file to disk and have the netCDF4-python library available. Otherwise, xarray falls back to using scipy to write netCDF files and defaults to the NETCDF3_64BIT format (scipy does not support netCDF4).

  group : str, optional

  > Path to the netCDF4 group in the given file to open (only works for format=’NETCDF4’). The group(s) will be created if necessary.

  engine : {‘netcdf4’, ‘scipy’, ‘h5netcdf’}, optional

  > Engine to use when writing netCDF files. If not provided, the default engine is chosen based on available dependencies, with a preference for ‘netcdf4’ if writing to a file on disk.

  encoding : dict, optional

  > Nested dictionary with variable names as keys and dictionaries of variable specific encodings as values, e.g., ``{‘my_variable’: {‘dtype’: ‘int16’, ‘scale_factor’: 0.1,

  > > ‘zlib’: True}, …}``

  Notes

  Only xarray.Dataset objects can be written to netCDF files, so the xarray.DataArray is converted to a xarray.Dataset object containing a single variable. If the DataArray has no name, or if the name is the same as a co-ordinate name, then it is given the name ‘__xarray_dataarray_variable__’.

  All parameters are passed directly to xarray.Dataset.to_netcdf.