When determining the dimensions that a CDF variable spans in the cdf_to_xarray._determin_record_dimensions function, after reading the DEPEND_0 attribute, a check is performed to verify that the input variable has the same length as the variable pointed to by DEPEND_0. There is also a check that the length is not 0. This check makes it so that a CDF that has a set of zero length variables does not get converted to xarray correctly. AFAIK, zero length variables are allowed in both CDF and xarray, so the second check should be removed.