The AMRClaw and GeoClaw codes have the option to output results in binary using NetCDF instead of the usual Format of ASCII output files.
The hardest part may be installing netcdf on your computer. See http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/ for downloads and instructions.
In the Makefile for your application directory, add the appropriate links to the FFLAGS line to tell the compiler what netcdf libraries are used and where to find them. For example, if the libraries were installed in /usr/include then this line should look like this, along with whatever other flags you need:
FFLAGS = -I/usr/include -lnetcdf -lnetcdff
Also change the Makefile to remove the line that points to the routine valout.f in AMRClaw or to valout_geo.f in GeoClaw to the appropriate one of the following:
$(CLAW_LIB)/valout_nc.f \
or
$(GEOLIB)/valout_nc_geo.f \
After running the code, the output directory will contain files with names like fort.t0001.nc and fort.q0001.nc (for time frame 1, for example).
You can use the same setplot.py to plot the results as usual, but you need to add the line
plotdata.format = 'netcdf'
somewhere in the setplot function.