Summer project 2010 resource page (for students supervised by R. Caballero)

X-Y plots: To plot two same-length 1-d arrays X and Y (eg. time vs. pressure), do from pylab import * plot(X,Y) show() You can customize the plot's appearance in various ways, as documented here .
Contour plots: To display a 2-d array of data as a contour plot, use the contour function defined here . Here's a usage example (which assumes the contour function is already defined higher up in the script): ... contour(lon,lat,x) show()

FAQ

1) How do I get into the data server?
Open a terminal on the computer you're using and do:
ssh -X your.user.name@augie.ucd.ie
For things to work properly, the computer you are connecting from needs to have ssh and an X server installed. If you have no idea what that means, don't worry, just use the machines in the maths computer lab, which will work fine.

2) How do I transfer files to/from the data server?
If you need to transfer a file from your local machine onto the server, do:
scp filename your.user.name@augie.ucd.ie:
Don't forget the : at the end! To transfer a file from the data server to your local machine, do
scp your.user.name@augie.ucd.ie:filename .
Don't forget the . at the end!

3) Where is the data?
The ERA-40 reanalysis data is in in /Volumes/gordo/obs/ERA40/6hourly/surface
The CMIP3 model data is in /Volumes/gordo/cmip3
Irish station data is in /Volumes/gordo/obs/Irish-station-data
I've written some interfaces that allow you to easily read this data into your python script (see below)

4) How do I read the data?
Here are some example python scripts to help you read the data
Read ERA40 data
Read CMIP3 model data
Read station data
Here is an example of how you create and write to a netCDF file NetCDF example