Creating and Storing Multi-Dimensional Array in a netCDF File
After talking to a few people where I work we came up with this solution:
First we made an array of zeroes using the following argument:
array1=np.zeros((28,5,24,4))
Then appended this array by specifying where in the array we wanted to change:
array1[:,0,0,0]=list1
This inserted the values of the list into the first entry in the array.
Next to write the array to a netCDF file, I created a netCDF in the same program I made the array, made a single variable and gave it values like this:
netcdfvariable[:]=array1
Hope that helps anyone who finds this.
This question has potentially two parts but maybe only one if the first part can be encapsulated by the second. I am using python with numpy and netCDF4
First:
I have four lists of different variable values (hereafter referred to elevation values) each of which has a length of 28. These four lists are one set of 5 different latitude values of which are one set of the 24 different time values. 
So 24 times...each time with 5 latitudes...each latitude with four lists...each list with 28 values.
I want to create an array with the following dimensions (elevation, latitude, time, variable)
In words, I want to be able to specify which of the four lists I access,which index in the list, and specify a specific time and latitude. So an index into this array would look like this:
array(0,1,2,3) where 0 specifies the first index of the the 4th list specified by the 3. 1 specifies the 2nd latitude, and 2 specifies the 3rd time and the output is the value at that point.
I won't include my code for this part since literally the only things of mention are the lists
list1=[...]
list2=[...]
list3=[...]
list4=[...]
How can I do this, is there an easier structure of the array, or is there anything else I a missing?
Second:
I have created a netCDF file with variables with these four dimensions. I need to set those variables to the array structure made above. I have no idea how to do this and the netCDF4 documentation does a 1-d array in a fairly cryptic way. If the arrays can be made directly into the netCDF file bypassing the need to use numpy first, by all means show me how. 
Thanks!