Do it yourself scripts

zp/Height vs. Longitude

zplon_1.ncl: Black and white plot. Negative contours are dashed, zero line is double thickness. gsn_csm_contour is the plot interface that creates a contour plot. cnLineLabelPlacementMode = "constant", is one of the three methods for controlling contour labels. the constant method is the only one in which the label becames part of the line. ZeroNegDashLineContour is the special shea_util.shtml function that will take contours and make the zero line double thickness, and the negative lines dashed. There are many other contour effects you can use. There are four title strings you can use to label a plot. The gsnLeftString is automatically labeled with the long_name of the data, and gsnRightString is labeled with the units of the data. These can both be overwritten, or turned off (by setting them to ""). There is also gsnCenterString and the plot title tiMainString.

zplon_2.ncl: Adds color, a height axis and local time axis. cnFillOn = True, turns on a color plot. gsnSpreadColors is a special resource that tell the plot template to use the full range of the colormap. There are many built-in colormaps to choose from and many ways of specifying the color of a plot. axis.ncl contains all the functions used to put local time axis and height axis on the HAO master scripts. We have used two of those functions here (set_lt_axis_cnplot and haxis). To use these functions, you need to load axis.ncl at the top of your script. Note that set_lt_axis_cnplot turns off gsnLeftString and gsnRightString.

zplon_3.ncl: Demonstrates manually setting contour intervals cnLevelSelectionMode = "ManualLevels" cnMinLevelValF cnMaxLevelValF cnLevelSpacingF are the resources that manually sets the contour levels. vpWidthF and vpHeightF will allow you to stretch a plot.

zplon_4.ncl: Demonstrates a panel plot. There are too many nuances associated with panelling. Please review the CCSM panel example page for details.

zplon_5.ncl: Demonstrates how to calculate the min/max of the data and put it on a plot. Also limits the y-axis. The NCL built-in functions min and max allow you to take the min and max of the data. trYMinF will limit the lower bounds of the y-axis.There is also a trYMaxF

zplon_6.ncl: Interpolates to height. hao_contrib.ncl contains the the function (zplev_to_height) used to interpolate a variable on the HAO master scripts. To use this function, you need to load hao_contrib.ncl at the top of your script. This functions requires that you set a bottom and top height level to interpolate to and the interval between the top and bottom.