How can I convert climatic text data to raster in QGIS and ArcGIS?

Question

I have been provided with text (*txt) formatted, tabular climatic data. How can I convert climatic text data to raster in QGIS and ArcGIS? In addition to tabular data, the following information is provided

ncols         480
nrows         600
xllcorner     -20
yllcorner     -59.99999999996
cellsize      0.166667

Answer 1

This looks very much like ARCGIS ASCII grid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esri_grid

http://www.gdal.org/frmt_various.html

The additional data should be placed at the top of the tabular data. Then both QGIS and ARCGIS are able to read the data.

The corner coordinates look like degrees, so EPSG:4326 should be the right CRS if you are asked for it.