to the working directory. The
file must be copied and edited prior to execution if default
settings are to be changed. Preset values and comments on
userdef.ncl are meant to aid the user in this respect.
The color maps that are available by editing userdef.ncl
are rainbow (default), red-white-blue (recommended
for the color blind), shades of gray, tiger stripes
and NRL. See
example 6 in the
documentation of contour.sh for more information. Two of the
color maps can have up to 37 different colors, whereas the
others are limited to 18 different colors. Note that
tiger stripes may well be used with color repetion.
It is also relatively easy to zoom in on a subdomain (see
example 2 in the
documentation of vector.sh), and to change the vector
specification if vectors are present (see
example 3 in the
documentation of vector.sh). A new feature in v.1.2 is that
for depictions on geographical maps, the user may instead
zoom in by limiting the range of longitudes & latitudes,
see text in 'userdef.ncl' for details.
For the NCL trained user, the present shell scripts may be used
to produce a preliminary ncl script for later editing (with the
exception of the m*.sh multi-plot scripts), by setting a
flag for retaining the ncl script (see the syntax description
for each shell script).
End products
The products after execution of the presently provided shell
scripts are:
- a graphical depiction of the user provided field on the
screen
- a ncl script stored on a file (.contour.ncl etc.), however,
this script will be deleted unless a command line flag is
set (see the syntax of each script)
- an eps file and a png file, for most scripts with the
variable name as the prefix (e.g. temperature.eps
and temperature.png)
NCL documentation
Version history
v. 1.0 2005-04-24
v. 1.01 2005-07-09
- removed bug when using maps in addlayers.sh
- introduced option to include an additional .ncl file named
usermod.ncl immediately before plotting
- introduced options for stretching the isopleth contour
values by using a negative nv value in
userdef.ncl
v. 1.1 2005-12-13
- added a script slice.sh for extracting horizontal
slices from layered results
- added capabilities for additional animation output formats
(gif and mng) when using makemovie.sh
- introduced options for using cells or computed isopleths
when contouring, and added user specification for "land"
color, both in userdef.ncl
- minor bugs removed
v. 1.2 2006-04-11
- added option to use 2d fields for lon's & lat's in map
plots for scalars; if the longitude & latitude variable
names are NOT 'lon' & 'lat', they must be either be
provided on the command line or in a local copy of
'userdef.ncl'
- producing resized cropped png images using pstoppm &
convert
- included option to resize the png images by creating &
editing a local copy of the file 'resize'
- added option to specify font in 'userdef.ncl'
- added option to specify zooming for a longitude/latitude
span in 'userdef.ncl'
- modified error testing in most scripts
- added brief pause at the end of animations (last frame
repeated 4 times)
- no longer uses path to working directory for input &
output files (i.e. ./ is default as usual, but relative
or absolute paths may be used, so netcdf files may now
reside in any directory)
this may be a problem if these scripts are executed e.g.
by a cron job, so then you should first make ncl-scripts
with the ncl-metno tool, and include absolute paths in
the ncl script
- the multi-frame scripts m*.sh now produce gif animations,
and files with single frames are deleted (default, the
files are retained by using a special syntax);
makemovie.sh is obsolete, and has been discarded in
v. 1.2 along with xcontour.sh
Questions?
Contact
Arne Melsom (arne.melsom@met.no),
Section Oceanography,
Norwegian Meteorological Institute.