Re: [Matplotlib-users] NetCDF input/output/plotting using Matplotlib w/ Basemap

Zane Selvans wrote:
> I have a model that calculates the tidal stress tensor (a symmetric 
> 2x2 matrix) on the surface of an icy satellite.  It's just two 
> orthogonal vector fields on the surface of the body.  I want to be 
> able to make pretty plots of the model output, including:
>
> * The magnitude of either one of the fields at any point
> * The magnitude and orientation of either or both fields, as a grid of 
> little arrows, whose colors correspond to whether the value is 
> positive or negative.
> * Animations of time (or other) series.
>
> I also want to be able to save the model output in a format that other 
> people can read and manipulate.  Ideally, model run results could also 
> be hosted on a web server, and other people could view them remotely.
>
> I just re-wrote the model in pure Python (it had been written in C 
> previously), and I've been using my own hacked together ASCII file 
> format and a Perl script that builds GMT plots based on them to make 
> figures and visualizations up until now... but I'm sick of that and 
> want something more flexible.
>
> This all seems to suggest to me, after a little poking around, that 
> the NetCDF file format would be good.  I've managed to get SciPy and 
> Matplotlib and Basemap installed and apparently working together 
> happily... but I can't seem to find any "official" module within that 
> structure for writing NetCDF files.  There are references to the old 
> Scientific.IO.NetCDF package, and I found something that had been 
> hanging around in the scipy.sandbox area... but which isn't there any 
> more.  There's quite a list of Python interfaces to NetCDF on the 
> Unidata website... but they don't make any recommendations as to which 
> is "best".
>
> If I'm going to be working within Matplotlib and Basemap and SciPy, 
> does anyone have a good recommendation for which NetCDF Python package 
> to use?  Or issues I should consider?
>
> Thanks for any insight,
>
> Zane
>

Zane:  Basemap already includes a NetCDFFile function that can read 
netCDF and opendap (http://opendap.org) datasets.  If you need to write 
netCDF, then netcdf4-python should do fine.

-Jeff

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Jeffrey S. Whitaker         Phone : (303)497-6313
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