What's new in the application examples

See what's new in the current NCL release.

19 November 2009

Example 16 was added to the histogram page showing how to label the histogram bars with values from the histogram itself.

15 November 2009

Example 6 was added to the ICON model data page showing how to overlay two high-resolution fields onto a coarse global field.
Example 28 was added to the XY plot page showing how to create a hodograph plot.

11 November 2009

Example 11 was added to the bar chart page showing how to panel a plot with multiple bar charts and add a custom legend.

7 November 2009

HDF-SDS example 5 was added to the HDF applications page showing how to draw multiple swaths on a single map.
Example 8 was added to the map tickmarks page showing how to change the labels of the X and Y axes of a cylindrical equidistant map.
Example 15 was added to the histogram applications page showing how to change the labels on the X axis.

31 October 2009

Added a page showing how to do overlays, which is what allows you to draw contours, vectors, streamlines, and XY plots on top of other plots (like maps).
Added a page showing how to plot ICON model data.

9 October 2009

Alan Norton of NCAR added a page showing how to use NCL with VAPOR to analyze WRF-ARW data in 3D.

21 September 2009

Example 3 was added to the shapefiles applications page showing how to plot stream data from South America.

18 September 2009

Added a page showing how to control the draw order of various plot elements.

16 September 2009

New pages:

Visualizing various kinds of HDF datasets.
Visualizing high resolution precipitation datasets.
Visualizing GODAS data.
Binning data from satellite swath data.
Creating scatter plots.

New examples:

Example 3 was added to the native applications page showing how to retrieve lat/lon coordinates for a data array when all you have are map projection parameters.
Example 24 was added to the panel applications page showing how to control the resize scale factor for paneled plots that are different sizes.
Example 23 was added to the maponly applications page showing how to draw all the current map projections for V5.1.x.
Example 9 on the text applications page was supplemented to show how to attached rotated text strings.

30 July 2009

Example 10 was added to the contour-on-contour applications page showing how to plot precipitation over terrain data.

22 July 2009

A new applications page was created for the various editor enhancement scripts that have been contributed by users over the years. These scripts are not brand new; they were previously hosted under the "Support page.
Example 4 was added to the Station Data applications page showing how to plot all METAR reporting stations for a specified region.
This script was contributed by Jonathan Vigh of Colorado State University.

19 July 2009

A new applications page was created to demonstrate the difference between an NCL viewport and bounding box.

29 June 2009

Example 8 was added to the masking applications page showing how to draw all the counties of a particular state and mask all other areas.

15 June 2009

A new applications page was created to show how to create animations in NCL.

10 June 2009

A new applications page was created to show how to read and plot shapefile data.
Note that this is only available in V5.1.1 or later, and in V5.1.1, it's a beta test version only.
Example 23 was added to the panel applications page illustrating how to panel 12 plots that are attached along the X and Y axes.

24 April 2009

A new applications page was created to show some vector effects, like filling and outlining vectors, and controlling the look of vector arrow heads.

10 April 2009

Example 26 was added to show another way of adding a curve to an existing XY plot.
Example 27 was added to show how to generate an XY plot with four curves and four separate Y axes.

12 March 2009

Example 8 was modified on the maponly applications page to show how to draw only those countries/boundaries that are specified via the mpOutlineSpecifiers resource. In this example various countries in southeastern Asia were drawn, along with the Chinese provinces.

28 January 2009

Example 10 was added on the unique applications page to show how to draw a series of attached XY plots, with gray bars added for emphasis.
This example was contributed by Yi Wang of PNNL.

28 January 2009

Example 25 was added on the XY page to show how to add data to an existing XY plot.
Example 14 on the contour effects page was added to show how to overlay shaded contours on color-filled contours, and generate two separate labelbars.

10 October 2008

Example 7 was added to the masking applications page showing how to color fill and then outline areas of missing data in a contour plot. This method could be used to mask and then fill all areas on a height by latitude (or longitude or time) plot that are below ground assuming one has topographic information.

7 October 2008

Example 24 was added to the XY page to show how to fill between two Y curves using new resources gsnXYFillColors or gsnXYAboveFillColors/gsnXYBelowFillColors.
Available in version 5.1.0 or later.
Example 19 was added to the maps only applications page showing how to draw some of the Antarctica ice shelves.
Available in version 5.1.0 or later.

12 September 2008

A new applications page was created to show how to modify the axes of XY, contour, and vector plots.

11 September 2008

There's now a list of all the resources and a list of all the functions/procedures used in the applications examples, along with the name of every example each one appears in, and the applications page associated with that example

10 September 2008

Examples 17 and 18 were added to the maps only applications page. Example 17 shows three new map projections added: Hammer, Aitoff, and Winkel tripel. Example 18 compares the old Mollweide projection with a new one that uses more accurate calculations.
Available in version 5.1.0 or later.

14 August 2008

Example 16 was added to the maps only applications page showing how to use a new map database for drawing province and state boundaries in China, India, and Brazil.
Available in version 5.1.0 or later.

29 July 2008

A color maps applications page was added.

25 July 2008

A T-S diagram applications page was added.

15 July 2008

Example 13 was added to the text applications page showing how to change the justification of your text strings.

27 May 2008

Example 9 was added to the legend applications page showing how to change the order of items in a legend.

22 May 2008

Example 9 was added to the contour-on-contour applications page showing how to overlay domains of different resolution.

22 April 2008

Example 13 was added to the histogram applications page demonstrating how to change the formatting of the bottom axis labels.

27 February 2008

An applications page for dealing with GrADS CTL files was added. This page provides a ruby script for parsing such files. Thanks go to Saji N. Hameed of the APEC Climate Center for this contribution.

05 February 2008

Examples 10 and 11 were added to the tickmarks applications page illustrating how to label both major and minor tickmarks. They both use a different method. Example 11 introduces a new function called gsn_blank_plot.

21 December 2007

Example 8 was added to the weather symbols applications page showing how to draw vectors with an informational label box using wmvect and wmvlbl.
Example 9 was added to the weather symbols applications page showing how to draw vectors over a map with an informational label box using wmvectmap and wmvlbl.

11 December 2007

Example 22 was added to the panel applications page illustrating how to add individual common titles to two sets of plots paneled on the same page.

5 December 2007

Example 21 was added to the panel applications page illustrating how to add common X/Y axis labels to a panel plot.

27 November 2007

Examples 11 and 12 were added to the text applications page showing how to add a label on the right Y axis, and how to add subtitles to the top of a plot.

13 November 2007

An Evans plots applications page was added to show how to generate the special Evans plot, which is a way to visualize spatially two variables of interest, one of which provides some measure of "importance".

30 October 2007

Example 12 was added to the labelbar applications page illustrating how to control the end labels and boxes on a contour labelbar.

25 October 2007

Example 6 was added to the three-dimensional graphics applications page illustrating how to draw curves with arrowheads.

24 October 2007

Example 7 was added to the weather symbols applications page illustrating how to draw custom arrows.

24 September 2007

Example 15 was added to the maps only applications page illustrating how to draw climate divisions.

17 September 2007

Example 20 was added to the panel applications page illustrating how to panel plots of different sizes.

12 September 2007

Example 6 was added to the weather symbols applications page illustrating plotting station model data over a map using wmstnm.

15 August 2007

Example 18 was added to the Color Fill applications page to illustrate colors in the HSV color space.

30 July 2007

A boxplot example was added that shows how to calculate and plot the median, minimum value, maximum value, and the 25th and 75th percentiles of two timeseries.
An example was added to the mask applications page that shows how to use landsea_mask to calculate a land sea mask for a particular grid, and how to apply the calculated land sea mask to a data array.

27 July 2007

An applications page was added showing how to generate contours from an EASE grid.

9 July 2007

Example 5 was added to the weather symbols applications page showing how to panel plots that use calls to wmbarb, wmbarbmap, and wmstnm.

1 July 2007

A 3D plot applications page was added to show how some low-level routines can be called from NCL to generate 3D scatter, surface, and isosurface plots.

1 June 2007

Example 22 on the XY page was added to show how to shift the left Y axis away from the rest of the plot.

31 May 2007

A Example 9 on the tick mark page was added to show how to place and label the righthand side Y-axis tick marks differently than the lefthand side Y-axis tickmarks.

23 May 2007

A TIGGE project applications page was added to show how NCL could be used to handle and display the TIGGE project data.

11 May 2007

Example 21 on the XY page was added to show how to use reference lines and fill colors to achieve a special kind of filling of your XY plot.

27 March 2007

Example 13 on the contour effects page was updated to show how to use the new gsn_contour_shade function.

16 February 2007

Example 19 on the XY page was updated to show how to add a legend to a plot with three different Y axes.

28 December 2006

Example 19 was added to the panel applications page to show how to use the new resources gsnPanelXF, gsnPanelYF, and gsnPanelDebug.

14 December 2006

A new table applications page was added showing how to use the new gsn_table procedure.

28 November 2006

The Taylor Diagram applications page was significantly overhauled to add some new examples, and to reflect some of the updates made to the code.

17 October 2006

A new ASCII-reading page was added to show how to read columnar data that is separated by a common delimiter.

16 October 2006

Example 9 was added to the unique applications page showing how to create a topographic map using raster contours.

14 October 2006

Example 12 was added to the histogram applications page showing how to annotate each individual bar.

26 September 2006

Example 11 was added to the polygons, polymarkers, and polylines applications page showing how to draw the political divisions of Brazil.

1 September 2006

A new WRF page was added showing how to generate storm track plots from WRF data.

30 August 2006

Two more unique application examples were added (examples 7 and 8). One is an animation that shows a simulation of an idealized vortex evolution on the sphere, and the other is a storm track of Hurricane Katrina.

23 August 2006

A new page has been created to show how to contour the ARPEGE grid.

18 July 2006

A legend example was added (example 8) to show how to use the new gsn_create_legend function.

20 June 2006

An example was updated to show how to use a new resource called mpMaskOutlineSpecifiers to mask outlines in a map that you don't want to see. This is useful if you need to create "simplified" continental outlines (that is, outlines without small islands and inland water areas included). See example 14 in the map only section.
A new example has been created to show how to use gsn_create_text and gsn_add_annotation to create text and attach and position it on a plot. See example 9 in the text section.

31 May 2006

A new example has been created to show how to draw simple continental outlines that don't include inland water or island outlines. See example 14 in the map only section.

19 April 2006

Example 12 was added to demonstrate how to color fill/pattern fill/outline areas with missing values.
Example 2 was added to the time applications page showing how to use ut_calendar / ut_inv_calendar to go from a mixed Julian/Gregorian date to a UT-referenced date, and then back again.
Example 3 was added to highlight the functionality of yyyymm_to_yyyyfrac, which can be used to set up a monthly time array useful for plotting purposes.

14 April 2006

Example 9 was added to the polygons, polymarkers, and polylines applications page showing how to draw the meteorological subdivisions of India.
Example 4 was added to the wind barb applications page showing how to produce a wind profile plot using gsn_csm_vector_scalar.

28 February 2006

Example 20 was added to the XY applications page showing how to use gsn_csm_x2y2 to plot curves with multiple X and Y axes.

26 January 2006

A new page on visualizing NARR (North American Regional Reanalysis) data was added.
Two new examples were added to the paneled plots page (examples 17 and 18). One shows how to panel plots that have two separate labelbars, and the other shows how a labelbar doesn't explicitly need colors in the middle.
Example 6 was added to the unique examples to show a visualization with ten XY plots and a legend at the bottom.
A new polymarker example was added (example 8) showing how to use markers of different colors and sizes at station locations.

24 November 2005

A new example was added to the tickmarks page (example 8) to show even more ways of formatting tickmark labels.

20 October 2005

New examples have been added to the legends (example 7) and station data (example 2) applications pages. These examples are very similar: they show how to plot station data by grouping the values by their ranges, and then using a unique marker color and size for each range.

2 October 2005

Two new applications page were created to show how to draw various weather symbols and how NCL can interact with the UNIX system command line.

30 September 2005

A new applications page has been created to show how to use the new omega_ccm and omega_ccm_driver functions, both available in NCL version 4.2.0.a033. (This version probably won't be available until November 2005.)

8 September 2005

A new applications page has been created to show how to read in station data and generate visualizations of it.

7 September 2005

Three new examples have been added to the titles applications page. Of note is example 7, which shows how to modify the position of the gsnLeftString, gsnCenterString, and gsnRightString text strings. Also, example 8 shows how to switch the locations of the tiXAxisString and tiYAxisString.
A new applications page has been created to show off some of the unique visualizations created by outside users who use NCL.
A new example (#11) has been added to the histogram applications page to show how to use the new gsnHistogramBarWidthPercent resource, which allows you to set the width of the bars based on a percentage of the bin width.

15 July 2005

A new example has been created in the mask applications page to show how to draw filled contours only over Africa, while filling the land and oceans everywhere else.

30 June 2005

A new page has been created to show how you can contour triangular meshes.

14 June 2005

A new page has been created to show the various ways that you can control the appearance of tickmarks. Of special interest is example 4 which demonstrates how to change the formatting and precision of tickmark labels.

24 May 2005

A new example has been created to show how to generate US counties. See example 10 in the map only section.

22 April 2005

A new page has been created to show how to contour the ORCA grid, and also, subsequently, how to do cell mode contour fill and outline the individual cells.

19 April 2005

2D vertical coords example 2 - shows how to do contour cell fill and outline the underlying data grid.
XY example 19 - shows how to use the new gsn_csm_xy3 function.

15 January 2005

Contouring non-uniform grids example page.
Example (color_17) demonstrates how to use gsn_draw_named_colors to draw a list of named colors (useful for debugging purposes).

9 December 2004

The long lag in adding new NCL examples had been due to our efforts in creating the new website.

Contour Levels example page.
Contour Effects example page: Many of the examples on this page have been updated to reflect new resources that have replaced shea_util functions for contour effects.
example (xy_7) has been updated to reflect the addition of gsn_csm_xy2.
example (color_16) demonstrates how to retrieve the RBG values of an assigned colormap.
example (conLab_6) demonstrates how easy it is to adjust contour labels.
example (panel_16) demonstrates how to shrink a panel plot down to one column for ease in publication.

31 July 2004

EOF example page.
Meteogram example page.
example (xy_9) demonstrates how to draw the Mexican states.

21 January 2004

POP Slice example page.
example (maponly_8) demonstrates how to draw only certain portions of the continental outline when there is no map fill.
example(xy_11) has been modified to demonstrate how to change the precision of the tick mark labels on the YR axis.
example (eosdis_5) demonstrates the use of dim_gbits.
example (bar_6) and (bar_8) have been respectively modified to demonstrate the new resources gsnXYBarChartColors2 and gsnXYBarChartPatterns2.
example (resize_7) demonstrates how to maximize a plot created with viewport specifications.

2 December 2003

WRF example page.
lambert conformal native grid example page.
example (color_3) has been redone to demonstrate how to fill a contour with a transparent or no color.
example (polyg_7) demonstrates how to add your own polymarker
Meridional overturning example page

9 October 2003

Titles example page.
CRU data example page.
example (histo_10) demonstrates overlaying multiple histograms on top of each other.
example (xy_15) demonstrates how to draw inward facing tickmarks.
example (xy_17) demonstrates how to manually add a legend and text to an xy plot.
example (text_7) demonstrates how to put a degree symbol into a string.
example (lb_10) demonstrates how to put end labels onto a label bar

14 August 2003

Masked Lambert Conformal Projection example page.
example (conLab_5) (popscal_1) demonstrates a new label density resource.

(conOncon_8)

example (panel_15) demonstrates using gsn_panel twice to get two separate panels on a page each with their own label bar
Isentropic Levels example page.
Transect example page.
Zonal Average example page. This was a consolidation of the 1D and 2D zonal average pages.

22 July 2003

XY plot example page. This preplaces the older line example page.
example (lat2pop_2) demonstrates how to remap lat/lon vectors to the POP grid.
example (xy_3) demonstrates how to create your own xy dash pattern using the new function NhlNewDashPattern.
example (xy_4) demonstrates how to create your own xy marker style using the new function NhlNewMarker.
example (coneff_11) demonstrates how to change the size of the dots in a dot pattern using the new resource cnFillDotSizeF
Wavelet example page.

19 June 2003

example (h_time_5) demonstrates how to remove the height label from a pressure height plot.
example (conLab_4) demonstrates how to create a white background box around a contour line label.
example (native_3) demonstrates how to create a native stereographic projection from an ASCII file.
example (lb_9) demonstrates how to add your own label bar using gsn_labelbar_ndc

13 May 2003

Draw the POP Grid example page.
Native Grid example page has been updated so that all scripts call gsn_csm templates. This removes the necessity of creating label bars and separate titles.
Regional Climate Model example page has been updated so that all scripts call gsn_csm templates. This removes the necessity of creating label bars and separate titles.
lat/lon 2 POP example page.
example (conOncon_7) demonstrates how to draw a spaghetti plot with data that has 2D lat/lon coordinates.
example (color_15) demonstrates symMinMaxPlt that automatically created a symmetric min/max/int for use with symmetric color tables.
example (font_1) demonstrates the new font height resource gsnStringFontHeightF
example (font_2) demonstrates the new font height resource gsnPolarLabelFontHeightF

25 April 2003

eos dis example page has been updated to take advantage of the 2D coordinate plotting capability available since NCL version 4.2.0.a025. There was a bug in this capability that prevented it from working. This was fixed in NCL version 4.2.0.a028.
Map Tickmarks example page.
example (panel_1) demonstrates creating a panel plot with two manually placed plots.

19 Feb 2003

seaWiFs example page.
example (histo_9) demonstrates how to draw a histogram on top of a map.
example (resize_6) demonstrates how to create a European size plot
example (text_5) demonstrates how to add a carriage return to a string
example (text_6) demonstrates how to included double quotes in a string