issues: 868907284

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id node_id number title user state locked assignee milestone comments created_at updated_at closed_at author_association active_lock_reason draft pull_request body reactions performed_via_github_app state_reason repo type
868907284 MDU6SXNzdWU4Njg5MDcyODQ= 5223 'NaT' as fill value and netcdf export 6503378 closed 0     19 2021-04-27T14:29:16Z 2021-05-04T14:02:32Z 2021-05-04T14:02:32Z NONE      

I do not understand why this (xarray 0.17.0)

da = xr.DataArray([np.datetime64('NAT')]) da.to_netcdf('da') is OK and the following gives an error

da = xr.DataArray([np.datetime64('NAT')], attrs={'_FillValue': np.datetime64('NAT')}) da.to_netcdf('da')

TypeError: Invalid value for attr '_FillValue': numpy.datetime64('NaT') must be a number, a string, an ndarray or a list/tuple of numbers/strings for serialization to netCDF files

What is a "proper" fill value for datedime64? Thank you, Jan

Originally posted by @jvail in https://github.com/pydata/xarray/discussions/5200

I could not get an answer in the Q&A section. Essentially: I find it puzzling that something acceptable as a value is unacceptable as fill value.

 
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