reading arrays from netCDF, why I get a size of (1,1,n) - size

Question

I am trying to read and later on to plot data from a netcdf file. Some of the arrays contained at the .nc file that I am trying to store as variables, are created as a (1,1,n) size variable. When printing them i see [[[ numbers, numbers,....]]]. Why are these three [[[ are created? How can I read these variables as a simple (n,1) array?
Here is my code
import pandas as pd
import netCDF4 as nc
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from tkinter import filedialog
import numpy as np
file_path=filedialog.askopenfilename(title = "Select files", filetypes = (("all files","*.*"),("txt files","*.txt")))
file=nc.Dataset(file_path)
print(file.variables.keys()) # get all variable names
read_alt=file.variables['altitude'][:]
alt=np.array(read_alt)
read_b355=file.variables['backscatter'][:]
read_error_b355=file.variables['error_backscatter'][:]
b355=np.array(read_b355)
error_b355=np.array(read_error_b355)
the variable alt is fine, for the other two I have the aforementioned problem.

Answer 1

Is it possible that your variables - altitude, backscatter and error_backscatter - have more than one dimensions? Whenever you load that kind of data, the number of dimensions is kept by the netCDF library.
Nevertheless, what I usually do, is that I remove the dimensions that I do not need from the arrays by squeezing them:
read_alt = np.squeeze(file.variables['altitude'][:])
read_b355 = np.squeeze(file.variables['backscatter'][:]);
read_error_b355 = np.squeeze(file.variables['error_backscatter'][:]);