netcdf loading gives error

[mada0007]

so I have GPCC precipitation data that I am trying to load into iris cube using the following code

import iris
import iris.plot as iplt
import iris.quickplot as qplt

# Enable a future option, to ensure that the netcdf load works the same way
# as in future Iris versions.
iris.FUTURE.netcdf_promote = True

# Load some test data.
fname = '/Users/mada0007/Documents/correct_data/precipA'

theta = iris.load_cube(fname, 'precip')

and I get this error

/Users/mada0007/anaconda3/envs/RAWORK/lib/python3.6/site-packages/iris/__init__.py:237: IrisDeprecation: setting the 'Future' property 'netcdf_promote' is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Please remove code that sets this property.
  warn_deprecated(msg.format(name))
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/mada0007/anaconda3/envs/RAWORK/lib/python3.6/site-packages/iris/__init__.py", line 377, in load_cube
    cube = cubes.merge_cube()
  File "/Users/mada0007/anaconda3/envs/RAWORK/lib/python3.6/site-packages/iris/cube.py", line 374, in merge_cube
    raise ValueError("can't merge an empty CubeList")
ValueError: can't merge an empty CubeList
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/mada0007/anaconda3/envs/RAWORK/lib/python3.6/site-packages/IPython/core/interactiveshell.py", line 3267, in run_code
    exec(code_obj, self.user_global_ns, self.user_ns)
  File "<ipython-input-587-a23925d25d89>", line 12, in <module>
    theta = iris.load_cube(fname, 'precip')
  File "/Users/mada0007/anaconda3/envs/RAWORK/lib/python3.6/site-packages/iris/__init__.py", line 381, in load_cube
    raise iris.exceptions.ConstraintMismatchError('no cubes found')
iris.exceptions.ConstraintMismatchError: no cubes found

Could there be a better way to do this, what am I doing wrong?

[ajdawson]

This suggests that there is no variable with name "precip" (although I believe you that there is a netcdf variable with that name). This is a confusing aspect of how name constraints for netcdf loading works. You need to specify the name that iris will use for the cube, which is the CF standard name of the variable if it exists or the long_name attribute if not. Try using ncdump to see what the standard_name or long_name of the "precip" variable is and use that instead of "precip". Alternatively you can first do an unconstrained load with iris.load(fname) and find the cube you want in the resulting cube list.

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