The "natural" way to store measured values from multiple profiles is in a two-dimensional array, with a profile index, and a pressure/level index, as is done in the core-Argo format. In the general case where profiles have different numbers of levels, the CF conventions call this incomplete multidimensional array representation. It is simple to read data from such files, but they can be large and contain lots of fill values (because their size is set by the profile with the maximum number of levels). The extra space taken up by the fill values is largely eliminated when the file is compressed, though this comes at the cost slightly increased access time.
The alternative is the contiguous ragged array representation, which packs all the profiles "end-to-end" into a single dimension, removing the need for fill values. Reading values from this structure is slightly more complex because of the need to keep track of the length of each profile.
The "natural" way to store measured values from multiple profiles is in a two-dimensional array, with a profile index, and a pressure/level index, as is done in the core-Argo format. In the general case where profiles have different numbers of levels, the CF conventions call this incomplete multidimensional array representation. It is simple to read data from such files, but they can be large and contain lots of fill values (because their size is set by the profile with the maximum number of levels). The extra space taken up by the fill values is largely eliminated when the file is compressed, though this comes at the cost slightly increased access time.
The alternative is the contiguous ragged array representation, which packs all the profiles "end-to-end" into a single dimension, removing the need for fill values. Reading values from this structure is slightly more complex because of the need to keep track of the length of each profile.