__Acknowledgement__: The NEAD format includes NetCDF metadata and is proudly inspired by both SMET and NetCDF formats. NEAD is designed as a long-term data preservation and exchange format. The NEAD specifications were presented at the __"WMO Data Conference 2020 - Earth System Data Exchange in the 21st Century" (Virtual Conference)__. ----------------------- __Summary:__ The Non-Binary Environmental Data Archive (NEAD) format is being developed as a generic and intuitive format that combines the self-documenting features of NetCDF with human readable and writeable features of CSV. It is designed for exchange and preservation of time series data in environmental data repositories. __License:__ The NEAD specifications are released to the public domain under a Creative Commons CC0 "No Rights Reserved" international license. You can reuse the information contained herein in any way you want, for any purposes and without restrictions.