The on-disk format you would probably want to use with xarray is netCDF - which is generally n-dimensional gridded data, and some metadata about what those dimensions are, the units of the data, and other miscellanies.
One way to think of xarray is as a really nice in-memory representation of a netCDF file with some pretty powerful methods for manipulating that data, in much the same way that you can think of DataFrames as a really nice in-memory representation of a csv/table with some powerful methods.
I use xarray for working with satellite imagery and weather model grids - it's a million times better than the fragile MATLAB code I used to use.
One way to think of xarray is as a really nice in-memory representation of a netCDF file with some pretty powerful methods for manipulating that data, in much the same way that you can think of DataFrames as a really nice in-memory representation of a csv/table with some powerful methods.
I use xarray for working with satellite imagery and weather model grids - it's a million times better than the fragile MATLAB code I used to use.