CDO

Hello,
I am having some problems in NC - GRB2 conversion and reference time assignment.

In the attachments you can try to reproduce the problems, there are one netCDF-4 files and its counterpart in GRIB2 format.

I am running CDO with there libraries:

• cgribex library version : 1.9.3
• ecCodes library version : 2.20.0
• NetCDF library version : 4.7.4 of Feb 4 2021 19:24:52 $
• hdf5 library version : 1.12.0
• exse library version : 1.4.1
• FILE library version : 1.8.3

What I am trying to do are two different operations:

1. NC --> GRIB conversion using cdo -f grb2 setltype,160 test.nc test.grb2;
2. Reference time assignment using cdo -setreftime,1970-01-01,00:00:00 test.nc test2.nc;
3. Reference time assignment using cdo -setreftime,1970-01-01,00:00:00 test.grb2 test2.grb2.

Untill version 1.9.7.1, all of these commands run fine without errors.

Starting from version 1.9.8, I get:

1. The conversion seems to go fine, but using cdo -sinfo of the GRB2 file the reference time is 2021-05-24 23:30 (i.e. the same of the first time step of the file) instead of 1970-01-01 00:00:00 as in units of time;
2. The reference time assignment of the NC files fails with a strange error;
3. The reference time assignment of the GRB2 file does nothing.

Can anyone reproduce this problem and / or know these issues?
Sincerely,
Paolo Oliveri