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[current release |
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Version 6.1.0-beta
May 2012
Version 6.1.0-beta will be the next
release of NCL.
Version 6.0.0
30 May 2011
Version 6.0.0 is the current
version of NCL.
Go to the download
page for information on downloading this version.
Version 6.0.0-beta
2 March 2011
This was a test release for the official 6.0.0 release
Version 5.2.1
26 July 2010
New functions
Updates to GRIB1/GRIB2 reader
- Added support for reading (NCEP) Climate Forecast System
Reanalysis (CFSR): 1979-2010 files. These GRIB2 files have a non-standard method for
specifying statistical-process variables.
- Updated ability to read WAFS upper-air forecasts in GRIB2 code form
A new attribute "type_of_spatial_processing" was added to statistical
spatial variables that use GRIB2 template 4.15. Also added statistical
variable type suffixes to the variable names (_avg, _max) in order to
distinguish otherwise identical variable names.
- Fixed a problem reading Canadian Meteorology Centre's GEM data
in GRIB1 format.
Implemented a
fix for GRIB1 files (intended to have global longitudinal extent)
where lo1 and lo2 are equal (e.g. both are set to 180 -- rather than
what has alwas been expected---lo1 = -180 and lo2 = 180).
New resources
Updated functions
- rcm2points
A new option was added (opt=2) that uses a bilinear interpolation
scheme rather than the (default) inverse distance squared.
- wrf_uvmet
This function was updated to recognize missing values and deal
with them accordingly.
Infamous ARSCAM/ARPRAM bug fixed
The infamous error:
fatal:ContourPlotDraw: ARSCAM/ARPRAM - ALGORITHM FAILURE
fatal:ContourPlotDraw: draw error
which caused some plots to not be drawn has been fixed.
Other bugs fixed
- A bug was fixed that restricted the length of a graphical output
string to 254 characters.
- Fixed an "assignment mismatch" bug with trying to replace a
coordinate array with an array of a different type inside a procedure.
- gsn_csm_vector_scalar_map_polar
Fixed a bug in which if you tried to panel plots created by this function,
no common labelbar would appear.
- month_to_annual
A bug was fixed in which this function would return an unexpected
"dimension sizes" error.
- pdfx, pdfxy
At the suggestion of a user, the way the bin sizes were calculated was changed.
- readAsciiTable
Fixed a bug in which if the first value of "opt" is 0, the second
value is ignored.
- ut_calendar / ut_inv_calendar
There was a problem with these functions if you had set the
UDUNITS_PATH environment variable to an older UDUNITS-1 path.
You would get an error that looks like this:
warning:ut_calendar: Invalid specification string. Missing values will
be returned.
This problem should be fixed now, and you shouldn't
need to set UDUNITS2_XML_PATH (this was the work-around
for V5.2.0).
- uv2dv_cfd, uv2vr_cfd
A bug was fixed in which the _FillValue was not being set if the input
"u" didn't have a _FillValue. These now always returns a _FillValue
attribute.
- wgt_vol_ave
A bug was fixed in which "NaN" (not a number) values were incorrectly
returned if a subset of the data was all missing. It now returns
missing values.
- wrf_slp / wrf_user_getvar
Fixed a memory leak when multiple "slp" were read off a file.
- Fixed a problem in V5.2.0 with reading an OMI Aura HDFEOS5 file.
Version 5.2.0
14 April 2010
NCL hosted on new ESG website
The NCL 5.2.0 binaries are being released on a new ESG system,
which was officially released for production on May 5, 2010.
The URL is the same as before:
http://www.earthsystemgrid.org
New output formats
We've added some new graphical output formats (workstation types).
These are based upon an experimental graphics driver, and are
considered beta-level capabilities:
- "png" or "newpng" for PNG output
- "newps" for PostScript
- "newpdf" for PDF
These formats can be used with gsn_open_wks:
wks = gsn_open_wks("png","test") ; Will create "test.000001.png"
wks = gsn_open_wks("newpdf","test") ; Will create "test.pdf"
wks = gsn_open_wks("newps","test") ; Will create "test.ps"
The "newpdf" workstation generally produces smaller output files than
the original "pdf" type. Unfortunately, the "newps" output does not
produce smaller PostScript files.
The "newps" and "newpdf" formats will remain in test mode for awhile,
and may eventually replace the original "ps" and "pdf" formats. The
original formats may be kept for backwards compatibility.
The old "png" format, which was never officially advertised, has been replaced
by the new graphics driver; "png" is now synonymous with "newpng".
HDF-EOS5 reader
NCL can now read HDF-EOS5
files via the addfile or
addfiles functions. You can also use the tools ncl_filedump and ncl_convert2nc to
dump the contents of the file to the screen, or convert it to NetCDF.
New variable types
- int64
- uint64
- ulong
- uint
- ushort
For more information, see the "
Data Types"
section in the
NCL Reference
Manual. See also the list of
new
conversion functions.
New functions
New user-contributed functions
A number of users have been sending us some nice NCL scripts, so we've decided to
create a new directory for these.
- calendar_decode2 -
Translates numeric time coordinates to calendar times (contributed by Dave Allured)
- kf_filter - Extracts
equatorial waves by filtering in the Wheeler-Kiladis
wavenumber-frequency domain.
- run_cor - Calculates
a running correlation (contributed by Sabeerli)
- time_axis_labels - Sets
resources necessary to draw nice tickmark labels using a format of
date/time on an axis (contributed by Arindam Chakraborty)
- ut_string - Converts time
values into nicely formatted strings (contributed by Carl
Schreck/Arindam Chakraborty)
New resources
Updated functions
-
clmDayTLL,
clmMonTLL,
clmMonTLLL,
stdMonTLL,
stdMonTLLL,
month_to_annual,
month_to_annual_weighted.
These were updated to use dim_avg_n and/or
dim_stddev_n.
- gsn_add_polygon,
gsn_add_polyline,
gsn_add_polymarker
These functions have been updated to recognize the special tfPolyDrawOrder resource.
- gsn_open_wks
This function has been updated to recognize the new output types:
"png", "newps", and "newpdf". For more information, see the "New graphical output formats"
section.
- int2p_Wrap
The argument prototype xo[*]:numeric is no longer
applicable. The function allows the xo to be multidimensional.
- PopLatLon, PopLatLonV
These functions have been updated to recognize the high resolution
"tx0.1v2" mappings.
- relhum
The function has been updated to allow relative humidities > 100% (super saturation). Previously, these were set to 100%.
- ut_calendar and ut_inv_calendar
These functions are now linked against
the UDUNITS-2
library. This means the code has a new dependency on some UDUNITS-2
XML files that come installed with this version of NCL.
Unfortunately we've discovered a bug in V5.2.0 where if you have the
UDUNITS_PATH environment variable set, and it's pointing to an older
UDUNITS-1 path, then these functions will fail with a message like:
warning:ut_calendar: Invalid specification string. Missing values will
be returned.
There are two possible work-arounds:
- Set the environment variable UDUNITS2_XML_PATH to point to
$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/udunits/udunits2.xml:
setenv UDUNITS2_XML_PATH $NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/udunits/udunits2.xml
or
export UDUNITS2_XML_PATH=$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/udunits/udunits2.xml
- Unset the UDUNITS_PATH environment variable before you run NCL.
- WindRoseBasic,
WindRoseColor,
WindRoseThickLine.
These were updated to allow the wspd and wdir to be multi-dimensional.
Updates and changes to GRIB1/GRIB2 reader
GRIB2 code table updates
BACKWARDS INCOMPATIBILITY ALERT
The GRIB2 code tables have been extensively revised to bring them
up-to-date with the currently documented state of the parameter tables
primarily as defined by NCEP in links from the parameter category page
at
http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/docs/grib2/grib2_table4-1.shtml. ECMWF
tables, as documented
at http://www.ecmwf.int/publications/manuals/d/gribapi/fm92/grib2/show/parameter/,
were also consulted with the goal of harmonizing the parameter lists
and descriptions as much as possible. The number of defined parameter
has almost doubled, increasing from 371 to 701. This should eliminate
most of the warnings about unrecognized parameters. Unfortunately,
this process has led to some unavoidable backwards incompatibilities,
primarily due to changes in the short names that form the base name
for NCL variables that represent the aggregated GRIB records.
When GRIB2 was first introduced the NCEP documentation did not
include abbreviations (short names) for many parameters. Since NCL's
variable naming scheme requires a short name, NCL developers invented
them where needed. Now, however, NCEP has created their own
abbreviations for every parameter. Naturally enough, these names do
not all coincide with the short names chosen by the NCL
developers. To prevent confusion and to promote future
interoperability, the NCL development team has decided that the
importance of using essentially the same parameter names as NCEP
outweighs the immediate cost of a certain amount of backwards
incompatibility. As a gauge of the scope of the problem, 92 short
names (approximately 25% of the parameter total prior to this release)
have had short name changes. However, this statistic may exaggerate
the scope of the problem, because many or most of these changes apply to
new and therefore probably relatively obscure parameters.
In order to mitigate this problem for users who may not immediately
be able to update their codes to reflect the new variable names, the
previous version of the code tables is being included with the
distribution in a parallel directory tree. Users can switch from the
default set of code tables located
at $NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/grib2_codetables by setting the
environment variable NIO_GRIB2_CODETABLES to point to
$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/grib2_codetables.previous. For
reference a list of the short name changes and additions is
available here.
There have also been some changes to the parameter description
string that serves as the value of the long_name
attribute. Basically the capitalization as been regularized by making
all words except the initial word lower case. The only exception to
this rule is for acronyms that are traditionally all upper-case.
Note that the GRIB2 codetables are text files that can easily be
edited. Therefore users who do not like any aspect of the presentation
of the parameters can create their own copy of the directory tree and
modify it to suit their needs. By pointing
NIO_GRIB2_CODETABLES to this copy of the code tables NCL
will immediately incorporate the modifications into its presentation of GRIB2
data.
One additional point is that sort of incompatibility should not happen again.
The new NCL development policy is that short names will no longer be invented.
If parameters happen to be documented without an abbreviation, they will
appear in NCL's presentation of the data as VAR_x_x_x_... (for GRIB2 data),
where the 3 'x's stands for discipline, category, and parameter number. This
is also true for GRIB1 data, except that the form is VAR_x_...,
where 'x' is simply the parameter number.
Partial support for complex packing in GRIB1 files
Support was added for row by row complex packing without secondary bit maps in GRIB1 files.
Support for GRIB2 spatial statistical data
Added support for product template 4.15 which defines statistical processes over
a spatial region.
Partial support for GRIB2 grid type 204 (curvilinear orthogonal grids)
This grid type is supported without coordinate data. Notably, however, the example file
contains its own coordinate data as variables in their own right.
Lazy evaluation implemented for logical arrays
BACKWARDS INCOMPATIBILITY ALERT
The and (.and.) and or (.or.) operators now perform lazy evaluation
in an array context. If the left hand side logical expression is a scalar, there is no change in behavior. If
the left hand logical expression is an array, lazy evaluation is now performed on an element by element basis.
This gives a different result than previous versions of NCL for any elements that match the following two cases:
True .or. MissingFalse .and. Missing
Prior versions returned Missing for both these cases. As of the current version, the first case returns True
and the second case returns False. However, unlike with lazy evaluation when the left hand side is scalar,
both the left hand side and right hand side expressions are evaluated individually prior to applying either logical operator.
This means that this form of lazy evaluation cannot be used to avoid error conditions that might occur from evaluation of the
right hand side expression.
See logical expressions and
lazy evaluation in NCL for more information.
New color tables
These color tables were graciously contributed by MeteoSwiss.
[Click on
image for larger version.]
For a list of all the available color tables, see the
color table gallery.
OPeNDAP-enabled binaries now available for all systems
NetCDF Version 4.1.x now comes with OPeNDAP support built into it,
which makes building an OPeNDAP-enabled version of NCL much easier. As
a result, we provide OPeNDAP-enabled binaries for all systems we
support.
There may be some dependencies on shared libraries like "libcurl",
"libcrypto.so", "libidn.so", and "libssl.so". These may already be on
your system.
If you run into a problem with shared libraries when running "ncl",
then either download a non-OPeNDAP enabled binary, or see these Linux or Cygwin notes.
Bugs fixed
- A bug was fixed in writing classic NetCDF 4 files if the following
conditions were met:
- You were writing a NetCDF-4 classic file on a big endian machine.
Big endian machines include IBM/AIX/Power, Mac PowerPC, and
Sun/Solaris systems.
To write a NetCDF-4 classic file, you must have put the following line
in your NCL script, before any addfile(s) call:
setfileoption("nc", "Format", "NetCDF4Classic")
Otherwise, by default, you will be writing a NetCDF 3 file, and you
shouldn't have any problems.
- You are writing more than 10 global attributes and/or more than 10
variable attributes to a file. (In some testing, this number seems to
vary depending on conditions we're not sure of.)
- If you then transfer this NetCDF file to a little endian system
(Linux Intel or Mac Intel systems), you may not be able to read it
back in using an NCL script, ncl_filedump, or any other program that
reads NetCDF-4 classic files.
- Another bug in the recent implementation of aggregated variable
subscripting for the file list returned by the
addfiles function was found in version 5.1.1 and has now been
fixed. It involves selection along the aggregated dimension only when
using vector subscripting. The problem occurs when a selection results
in a single element being accessed along the aggregated dimension for
any file in the list. The symptoms of this problem range from possible
core dumps to returned variables that have fewer coordinate variables
than expected along with odd mix-ups between the coordinate variables
that are present. Users are advised to avoid using vector subscripting
along the aggregated dimension if there is a possibility that only one
element is selected from any of the files in the list.
- dim_avg_Wrap
This function was not copying variable attributes as advertised.
- gsn_panel
- A bug was fixed in which if you use a "plot" array
with multiple calls to gsn_panel,
and each set of paneled plots has a different common labelbar,
then you wouldn't get the correct labelbar for the second plot.
Here an NCL script that illustrates
the problem.
- mjo_xcor_lag_season
Added a statment that fixes a possible numerical rounding issue.
- rho_mwjf
Dr. Arne Melson [Norwegian Meteorological Institute,
R & D - Oceanography ] noted that the results were applicable
for computing surface potential density only, i.e., where depth=0.
A modification has since been applied [version 5.2.0] to accurately
compute all density surfaces (depth >= 0).
- rcm2points_Wrap
Corrected an interface error.
- skewT_PlotData
Fixed an issue that occured when the attribute [resource] ThermoInfo was set to False.
Version 5.1.1
June 16, 2009
New functions
- dim_avg_n, dim_avg_wgt_n,
dim_cumsum_n, dim_max_n,
dim_median_n, dim_min_n,
dim_num_n, dim_pqsort_n,
dim_product_n, dim_rmsd_n,
dim_rmvmean_n, dim_rmvmed_n,
dim_standardize_n, dim_stat4_n,
dim_stddev_n, dim_sum_n,
dim_sum_wgt_n, dim_variance_n,
dim_avg_n_Wrap, dim_avg_wgt_n_Wrap, dim_cumsum_n_Wrap, dim_rmsd_n_Wrap, dim_rmvmean_n_Wrap, dim_rmvmed_n_Wrap, dim_rmvmed_Wrap, dim_standardize_n_Wrap, dim_stddev_n_Wrap, dim_sum_n_Wrap, dim_sum_wgt_n_Wrap, dim_variance_n_Wrap
- This suite of functions is an upgrade to the existing dim_xxxx
functions which operate only on the rightmost dimension. The
dim_xxxx_n and dim_xxxx_n_Wrap functions operate
on the input given dimenions, so you don't have to reorder the
input array first.
- pdfxy
- Generates a joint probability density distribution.
- plt_pdfxy
- Creates a nice plot of the joint probability array created by the
pdfxy function.
- stat_dispersion
- Generates a number of 'dispersion' statistics.
- str_capital, str_concat,
str_fields_count, str_get_cols,
str_get_dq,
str_get_field,
str_get_nl,
str_index_of_substr, str_insert,
str_is_blank, str_join,
str_left_strip, str_lower,
str_right_strip, str_squeeze,
str_strip, str_sub_str,
str_switch, str_upper
- A new suite of string functions to make reading ASCII files and
processing NCL strings easier.
- yyyyddd_to_yyyymmdd
- Given year and day-of-year (yyyyddd) create a one-dimensional
array containing concatenated year, month and day-of-month [yyyymmdd]
values.
- yyyymmdd_to_yyyyddd
- Given concatenated year-month-day_of_month (yyyymmdd) creates a
one-dimensional array containing concatenated year and day-of-year
[yyyyddd] values.
Support for shapefiles and other geospatial data formats
addfile, ncl_filedump and ncl_convert2nc will
support the reading of several geospatial vector-data formats, such as shapefiles (.shp),
MapInfo interchange files (.mif),
Generic Mapping Tools ascii files (.gmt),
and pre-2006 edition
TIGER/Line files (.rt1).
This will be a test version, so use at your own risk. See the shapefiles applications page
for some examples.
New resources
- gsnStringFontColor /
gsnLeftStringFontColor /
gsnCenterStringFontColor /
gsnRightStringFontColor
- Allows you to set the color of the three subtitles
at the top of a "gsn_csm" plot.
Change to the procedure for updating GRIB 1 parameter tables
NCL uses abbreviated short names usually found in GRIB 1 parameter tables to form the
initial component of NCL file variable names. However, centers such as ECMWF
sometimes provide tables that have are have no short names
for some or all the parameters in the table. Formerly, the NCL
developers made up suitable short names, but this practice has been discontinued.
Now, as NCL adds a file, when no abbreviation is found for a parameter the
variable will be assigned the name "VAR_" as its initial component.
This is the same scheme used when a parameter has no entry in the table at all.
The difference is that no warning will be issued if an entry without an abbreviation
is found, and the variable will have "long_name" and "units" attributes as usual. Users should
expect that in future releases, if the tables are updated with abbreviations,
such names might well change.
New and updated ECMWF GRIB 1 parameter tables
The following new ECMWF parameter tables were added:
The following tables were updated:
"addfiles" bugs fixed
There were several bugs in the new implementation of the
addfiles function that was released with version 5.1.0. They were serious enough
that users should not trust the data read into variables using
addfiles for version
5.1.0. Anyone that relies on
addfiles should upgrade to the new release
immediately. The bugs that were fixed include the following:
- Striding across the leftmost (aggregated) dimension did not work correctly:
f = addfiles("file*07*.nc","r")
xnew = f[:]->x(::5,:,:)
- The second serious bug is that if the data extracted from the
first file of an aggregated variable was reduced to a single value,
the returned variable was incorrectly internally tagged as a
oscalar. When accessed without subscripts, this had the strange effect
of returning the proper number of elements but giving them all the
value of the first element. Here's an example of the problem:
fnames = (/ "file01.nc", "file02.nc" /)
fp = addfiles(fnames, "r")
days = fp[:]->days
print(days)
days = days / sum(days)
print(days)
Adding a subscript makes it work correctly:
days(:) = days(:) / sum(days)
- There was also a bug that resulted in files not being closed properly when the when the file list variable was deleted.
These bugs have been fixed in V5.1.1.
Bugs fixed
- vinth2p, vinth2p_ecmwf,
vintp2p_ecmwf
A bug was discovered that affects the top two interpolated levels only.
The underlying vinth2p, vinth2p_ecmwf,
vintp2p_ecmwf codes were taken directly
from the original CCM Processor
(http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/processor/subject/vertical.interp.html).
These subroutines have been used possibly since the late 1980s.
Recently, Mark Branson (Colorado State University), was examining
interpolated values at the uppermost interpolated levels. He
discovered a bug.
An example will be used to illustrate the bug:
Consider temperatures [TM (K)] at the following model hybrid levels
[PM (hPa)]:
PM TM <=== Raw Data
3.64 226.77
7.59 225.53
14.36 224.89
24.61 221.39
38.27 213.97
[snip]
Let's say that interpolation to the following pressure levels
(PI) is desired:
PI = (/ 5, 7, 10, 20, 30, 50, ...... /)
The following shows the values interpolated by the
vinth2p and vinth2p_ecmwf
functions before (v5.1.0) and after (v5.1.1) the bug fix:
PI v5.1.0 v5.1.1 diff
5 225.78 226.34 0.564
7 225.59 225.72 0.129
10 225.30 225.30 0.000 No differences
20 222.96 222.96 0.000
[snip]
The differences could be 'small' or 'large'. It depends upon the
vertical distribution of the variable.
- wrf_user_unstagger
had a bug with regard to getting the diagnostics "ua" and "va".
- There was a bug in reading a character variable that contained a
missing value off a NetCDF file. The missing value would not be set
correctly.
- Several functions (like sprinti and
sprintf) had a bug that caused an input
variable to incorrectly have an extra attribute added upon return.
"shea_util.ncl" has new dependency
If you are loading the "shea_util.ncl" script, then you will need to
load "contributed.ncl" before "shea_util.ncl":
load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/csm/contributed.ncl"
load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/csm/shea_util.ncl"
"shea_util" now depends on some functions in "contributed.ncl".
Changes to WRAPIT
For Linux and MacOS systems, the default fortran compiler
used has been changed from "g77" to "gfortran". If you
need to use the "g77" compiler, then use the new "-g77"
option:
WRAPIT -g77 your_file.f
Deprecated functions
- changeCase/changeCaseChar/replaceSingleChar
- These functions were deprecated. Use built-in functions
str_switch, str_lower,
str_upper, and str_sub_str.
Version 5.1.0
4 March 2009
New map functionality
New map databases have been added to NCL that provide improved map
outlines, and new map outlines like the provinces of China, and the states
of Brazil, India, and Australia. Some of the Antarctica ice shelves
have also been added.
Three new map projections have been provided as well: Hammer, Aitoff, and
Winkel tripel.
A new-and-improved
Mollweide projection has been added that
replaces the original Mollweide projection. The old Mollweide,
like a true Mollweide, has an elliptical perimeter twice as wide as
it is high (though with different dimensions) and its parallels are
straight and horizontal, as in a true Mollweide, but the shapes of the
land masses are noticeably different.
You can get the original Mollweide projection back by setting
the mpProjection resource to
"PseudoMollweide".
For some example scripts of these new features, see examples 16
through 19
at http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/Applications/maponly.shtml.
New functions
- area_hi2lores, area_hi2lores_Wrap
- Interpolates from high resolution grids to low resolution grids
using local area averaging.
- bin_sum
- Calculates binned sums and counts over multiple invocations of the procedure.
- bin_avg
- Calculate gridded binned averages and counts.
- cfftb, cfftf,
cfftf_frq_reorder
- These functions perform forward/backward complex fourier transforms
and reorder returned output to span -0.5 to 0.5.
- conform_dims
- This function is basically identical to conform
except that you pass in the dimension sizes of the new array size that
you want to conform to, rather than the array itself. This method is
preferable because you don't need to create the array before using
this function.
- covcorm
- Calculates a covariance or correlation matrix.
- crossp3
- Compute cross products of multiple vectors of length 3.
- dz_height
- Calculates the height layer thicknesses at each grid point
over varying surface terrain.
- evssm_lapack
- Calculates the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a real matrix
stored in symmetric storage mode.
- genNormalDist
- Generate a normal distribution give the mean and standard deviation.
- get_script_name and
get_script_prefix_name
- These two built-in functions return the name of a script of commands for
NCL to run, if provided, at the command line.
get_script_prefix_name will strip any script name
tag, if it exists.
Note: get_script_name was originally an
unadvertised function in the shea_util.ncl script, and
behaved slightly different in that it returned only the prefix of the
NCL script name. To get the behavior similar to this old version of
the function, use the new get_script_prefix_name
function, which doesn't require any script to be loaded in order to
use it.
- gsn_blank_plot
- This function creates a blank plot. This can be useful
if you just need a canvas to draw on, or if you need to
further annotate an existing plot.
- gsn_csm_attach_zonal_means
- This function attaches a zonal means plot to the given map
plot. This function is basically the equivalent of setting the special
resource gsnZonalMean to True when
calling gsn_csm_contour_map, so you
don't need to call this function unless you want to attach a zonal
means plot to a plot that wasn't created with gsn_csm_contour_map.
- kron_product
- Computes the Kronecker product for 2D matrices.
- latRegWgt
- Generates [sin(lat+dlat/2)-sin(lat-dlat/2) weights for equally
spaced (regular) global grids that will sum to 2.0.
- mjo_cross_coh2pha
- Calculates space-time coherence-squared and phase using the array
returned by mjo_cross_segment.
- mjo_cross_segment
- Calculates space-time cross spectrum for a single time segment.
- NormCosWgtGlobe
- Creates normalized cosine weights that sum to 2.0 just like
gaussian weights. This function is not really new, but it was
never documented before.
- numeric2int
- Convert any numeric type to integer with options for rounding or
truncation.
- obj_anal_ic
- Iterative correction objective analysis (Cressman, Barnes).
- pdfx
- Calculate the probability density distribution of a variable.
- quadroots
- Determine roots of a quadratic equation [ a*x^2 + b*x + c].
- rcm2points_Wrap
- Interpolates curvilinear grids (RCM, WRF, NARR) to user specified locations and retains meta data.
- rcm2rgrid_Wrap
- Interpolates RCM, WRF and NARR grids to rectilinear lat/lon grid and retains meta data.
- region_ind
- Returns the indices (subscripts) of two-dimensional
latitude/longitude arrays that span user specified latitude/longitude
boundaries.
- relhum_ttd
- Calculate relative humidity given temperature and dew point temperature.
- replaceSingleChar
- Within a string replace one character with another character.
- rgrid2rcm_Wrap
- Interpolates a rectilinear lat/lon grid to curvilinear grids like those used by the RCM, WRF and NARR models/datasets and retains meta data.
- short2flt_hdf
- Converts values of type short to values of type float using the
"scale" and "offset" attributes (if present).
This function has been around awhile, but not documented.
- spcorr
- Computes Spearman rank order correlation coefficient.
- triple2grid_Wrap
- Places randomly-spaced data onto the nearest locations of a grid described by one-dimensional coordinate arrays and preserves meta data.
- utm2latlon, latlon2utm
- Functions for converting between UTM and lat/lon coordinates.
- wk_smooth121
- Specialized 1-2-1 smoother associated with Wheeler-Kiladis
space-time spectra.
- wkSpaceTime (wkSpaceTime_cam)
- Calculates Wheeler-Kiladis space-time spectra (using a generic CAM
interface).
- wmvect, wmvectmap,
wmvlbl
- These are basic functions primarily for use with non-gridded
data. For gridded data then you could use a vector plot with vcGlyphStyle set to one of the appropriate
styles.
- ut_convert
- Converts a time variable from one set of units to another.
- yyyymmdd_time
- Creates a one-dimensional array containing year-month-day [yyyymmdd] values.
New and updated WRF-NCL functions
Special thanks to Cindy Bruyere of NCAR/MMM for her development of
the WRF-NCL visualization scripts, and to her and Soyoung Ha, also of
NCAR/MMM, for the addition, overhaul, and extensive testing of the
WRF-NCL analysis scripts.
- wrf_avo
- Calculates absolute vorticity from WRF model output.
- wrf_cape_2d
- Computes maximum convective available potential energy (CAPE),
maximum convective inhibition (CIN), lifted condensation level (LCL),
and level of free convection (LFC).
- wrf_cape_3d
- Computes convective available potential energy (CAPE) and
convective inhibition (CIN).
- wrf_dbz
- Calculates simulated equivalent radar reflectivity factor [dBZ]
from WRF model output.
- wrf_eth
- Calculates equivalent potential temperature from WRF model output.
- wrf_ij_to_ll
- Finds the nearest longitude, latitude locations to the specified
model grid indices (i,j).
- wrf_latlon_to_ij
- Replaced with wrf_ll_to_ij
- wrf_ll_to_ij
- Finds the nearest model grid indices (i,j) to the specified
location(s) in longitude and latitude.
- wrf_overlays,
wrf_map_overlays
- Functions to overlay multiple plots, created from other
ARW WRF plot functions. These functions replace the
soon-to-be-obsolete
wrf_overlay and
wrf_map_overlay procedures.
- wrf_smooth_2d
- Updated to handle missing data.
- wrf_pvo
- Calculates potential vorticity from WRF model output.
- wrf_user_getvar
- Updated to add several new diagnostics:
- "avo" - absolute vorticity [10-5 s-1]
- "cape_2d" - 2D fields mcape/mcin/lcl/lfc
- "cape_3d" - 3D fields cape and cin
- "dbz" - reflectivity [dBZ]
- "mdbz" - maximum reflectivity [dBZ]
- "geopt"/"geopotential" - full model geopotential [m2 s-2]
- "lat" - latitude
- "lon" - longitude
- "p"/"pres" - full model pressure [Pa]
- "pvo" - potential vorticity [PVU]
- "rh2" - 2m relative humidity [%]
- "ter" - model terrain height [m]
- "uvmet" - U and V components of wind rotated to earth coordinates
- wrf_user_ll_to_ij,
wrf_user_ij_to_ll
- Finds the nearest model grid indices (i,j) to the specified
location(s) in longitude and latitude (and vice versa).
- wrf_user_unstagger
- Unstaggers an input variable along a specified dimension.
- wrf_interp_1d, wrf_interp_3d_z,
wrf_rh, wrf_slp,
wrf_td, wrf_tk,
wrf_uvmet
- Updated to attach named dimensions to the output variable.
New functionality
- boxplot
- This plotting function now recognizes the gsnMaximize resource.
- conform
- This function was updated to allow string input.
- Support added for GRIB2 files from NWS National Digital Forecast Database
- These files are available from
http://www.weather.gov/ndfd/anonymous_ftp.htm. (Thanks to Jennifer Adams, GrADS developer,
for bringing them to our attention.)
- New and updated GRIB 1 NCEP tables
- Support was added for the following GRIB 1 tables:
The following tables were extensively updated:
- New GRIB 1 and 2 file option
TimePeriodSuffix
- A new file option for GRIB 1 and 2 files allows the user to suppress the time period suffix consisting of a numerical quantity and
a units indicator (e.g. '6h', meaning a 6 hour time period) from the ends of statistically-processed varables.
This allows a user to concatenate variables from different files that for reasons too complicated to go into here differ
in the time period suffix, even though they are in fact simply different forecast times of the same variable.
By default the value of this option is
True, meaning that the suffix appears. Use setfileoption to
set it False, which causes the time period suffix to be removed from all statistically-processed variables in NCL's representation of the file.
The part of the suffix that indicates the type of statistical processing (e.g. '_acc', meaning accumulation) remains.
Be aware that setting this option False can in some cases cause name collisions between variables that should be considered distinct.
In this case, variable names after the first instance have an incrementing numerical suffix, beginning with '_1', appended to disambiguate the names.
- Simpler method for creating literal values for various integer types
- You can now create NCL variables of type long, short, and byte on
the fly, using the special literals 'l', 'h', and 'b':
long_var = 32l
short_var = 5h
byte_var = 2b
Old way:
long_var = new(1,long)
long_var = 32
short_var = inttoshort(5)
byte_var = inttobyte(2)
- New option to ncl_filedump and ncl_convert2nc to support GRIB 1 and 2 option
TimePeriodSuffix
- The option
TimePeriodSuffix described above is supported in the NCL tools
ncl_convert2nc and
ncl_filedump as option [-tps]
The
default value is True -- setting this option causes the time period suffix
to be removed, as noted above.
- rcm2rgrid, rgrid2rcm,
rcm2points
- These functions have been improved to make them significantly
faster in the case where you have multiple grids to interpolate.
- Suffixes ".gr", ".gr1", and ".gr2" now recognized as GRIB 1 and 2
suffixes.
- gsn_histogram
- New attribute "BinLocs" is returned, which is an
array of the bin locations on the X axis.
- Support added for a convention of setting GRIB1 subcenter octet to 98 (the ECMWF center number)
- The French Weather Service apparently uses a convention of setting the GRIB1 subcenter octet
to the ECMWF center number to indicate that even though the file is not generated by ECMWF it
uses ECMWF parameter tables and local definitions. NCL adds knowledge of this convention to allow certain
FWS files to be interpreted correctly. The convention is additionally honored for all ECMWF-associated
countries and organizations on the theory that, even if it is only used in France, it is unlikely
that the subcenter octet will be set to the value 98 for any other reason.
- PopLatLon
- This function was updated to recognize the grid destination (grd_dst)
"1.9x2.5".
- transpose
- Handles one-dimensional variables. Improved documentation
- ut_calendar / ut_inv_calendar
- These functions were updated to add recognition of
calendars "360", "365" and "noleap". Thanks to David W.
Pierce, the developer of ncview,
for these additions.
This ut_calendar function was also updated to add a
new option for returning the dates as arrays of integers rather than
floats.
Major upgrade for "addfiles"
The file list variable type, which references multiple files as the return value of the
addfiles function, has new functionality. Conforming variables aggregated
over the file set now are returned with attribute and coordinate variable metadata.
Additionally, the leftmost aggregated dimension can now be subscripted correctly using
integer, coordinate, or vector subscripting. However, there is currently one caveat for vector subscripts
on the leftmost dimension: the array of vector subscripts must be non-decreasing. There can
be repeated indexes but no index in the array can be less than a previous index. Hopefully, this restriction
will be removed in a future release.
This new functionality replaces the need for
using addfiles_GetVar to
retrieve variables from a span of files. It will also run faster and be
more flexible.
New color tables
New resources
- gsnAboveYRefLineBarFillScales /
gsnBelowYRefLineBarFillScales
- If gsnYRefLine is set, gsnXYBarChart is set to True, and gsnAboveYRefLineBarPatterns and/or gsnBelowYRefLineBarPatterns are set, then this
resource indicates what fill scales to use for the fill patterns.
Values less than 1.0 give you a more dense pattern.
- gsnPanelScalePlotIndex
- This resource allows you to specify which plot being passed to
gsn_panel is to be used to determine
the scale factor for resizing all the plots. This is useful if the
first plot is smaller than of the other plots in the list.
This resource will not be useful if your plots are very different in size.
- gsnPolarTime / gsnPolarUT
- These resources allow you to turn on labeling using local time
instead of longitude labels, for plots generated by one of the gsn_csm_xxxx_polar
functions.
- gsnXYFillColors,
gsnXYAboveFillColors,
gsnXYBelowFillColors
- These resources can be used to fill between Y curves in an XY plot
generated by gsn_csm_xy. See
example 24
on the XY applications page.
- lgItemOrder
- This resource allows you to change the ordering of legend
items. See example 9 on the legend applications page for an
example.
Updated resources
- gsnZonalMean
- If this resource is set to True, then a zonal mean XY plot will be
drawn next to a contour/map plot. This resource has been around for
awhile for the gsn_csm_contour_map_ce function, and it now
works for the gsn_csm_contour_map
function (polar plots excepted).
- vpClipOn
- This resource is now recognized by the XyPlot,
and hence if set to True, markers that fall outside the plotting area
will be clipped. Note: to maintain backwards compatibility, this
resource defaults to False for xy plots.
Bug fixes
- cssgrid, csc2s
- Fixed a bug in which if some of the input data arrays contained
missing values, they were not being ignored as advertised.
- dpres_plevel
- Fixed a bug which occurred when the surface pressure was exactly 1000hPa or 100000Pa.
- eofunc_varimax_reorder
- This function is actually called "eof_varimax_reorder" in versions
4.3.1 and 5.0.0. It was supposed to be "eofunc_varimax_reorder"; this
has been fixed in 5.1.0.
- gsn_csm routines
that overlay vectors/streamlines and contours on the same plot.
- Fixed a problem where the gsnAddCyclic
resource was not always being set correctly in gsn_csm functions that
overlay both contours and vectors in a single plot (gsn_csm_streamline_contour_map, gsn_csm_vector_scalar, gsn_csm_vector_scalar_map_ce, etc).
- RasterFill contour mode
- Fixed a bug that sometimes resulted in the data cells being slightly misaligned when plotted over a global map when
in raster fill mode without smoothing. Also fixed a problem that caused irregular coordinates to be treated as regularly
spcaed when they were close (but not close enough) to a regular spacing.
- Memory bug
- Fixed a significant bug that resulted in an unnecessary copy of a
data variable when assigned to a file variable with the (/ /) syntax
(to indicate that attributes are not to be copied). Even if you specify
that you don't want attributes written, NCL still needs to check to
make sure the _FillValue attributes are the same. If not, then it doesn't
try to change the file variable fill value (because you are not
copying attributes), but instead it has to make a copy of the variable
you are assigning in order to ensure that its missing values are
updated to match the fill value that is assigned to the file variable.
The logic was wrong and it was copying the variable even when
the fill values were the same.
- GRIB 1 reader
-
- Fixed a bug that resulted in incorrect coordinates being generated for Lambert Conformal grids over
the Southern hemisphere.
- In order to fix a problem reading WRF GRIB files, if a GRIB record has the grid number octet set to 0, it is treated
as meaning the same as if it were set to 255. Both these values are now assumed to mean that the grid is defined in
the GDS (Grid Description Section) part of the GRIB record. This change will be visible to users: it will result in changes
to the names of dimensions, coordinate variables, and regular variables. Note that the developers of the WRF GRIB output code
have a agreed that setting this octet to 0 is an error on their part and that in the future it will be set to 255. This change
to NCL ensures that current and future WRF GRIB files will have the same naming scheme when opened in NCL.
- Modified the scaling of certain instances of the 'Dx' and 'Dy' coordinate variable attributes to ensure that the units
for these values can uniformly be assumed to be in meters. Prior to the change, in a few cases the units were kilometers.
- Fixed a problem that resulted in a core dump when the record
representing the first horizontal slice of a variable array was
missing.
- GRIB 2 reader
-
- Modified the way the GRIB2 codetable path is determined. Now if the NIO_GRIB2_CODETABLES environment variable
is set it takes precedence over the common path found through NCARG_ROOT.
- Fixed a problem that resulted in a core dump when the record
representing the first horizontal slice of a variable array was
missing.
- NetCDF reader/writer
- Fixed a problem that occurred when a single execution of NCL
results in more than 32767 separate NetCDF file opens and closes. The
id returned by the NetCDF library can become a negative
value in this case. NCL was treating this condition as an error when
it is actually legitimate.
- OPeNDAP-enabled versions of NCL
- Fixed a bug that resulted in the following error when exiting NCL
after opening any local NetCDF file or any remote file served by OPeNDAP:
ncclose: ncid 0: NetCDF: Not a valid ID
If a local file is opened for writing this error could result in loss of data in the file. The workaround for
earlier versions of NCL is either to ensure that all NCL file variables are deleted before
exiting, or, to use setfileoption to set both the options DefineMode
and SuppressClose to False.
- Problem involving files with very large dimensions (larger than
around 10 million elements)
- Fixed a bug that resulted in the return of incorrect data when
requesting a variable subset from a file where one of the dimensions
has more than around 10 million elements.
Version 5.0.0
6 November 2007
Open source
This is our first official open source release for NCL.
This release also includes full source code and binaries for NCAR Graphics, so you no longer
have to install the two packages separately.
New tool for checking validity of SCRIP input grid files
A new tool called "scrip_check_input"
tests whether the coordinates of all cells in a SCRIP input grid
file are entered in counterclockwise order and also tests whether the
cell centers are in the interior or on the boundary of the cells.
New functions
- generate_unique_indices
- Generate unique, random integer subscripts.
- Suite of color conversion functions
- hlsrgb - Converts HLS color values to RGB.
- hsvrgb - Converts HSV color values to RGB.
- rgbhls - Converts RGB color values to HLS.
- rgbhsv - Converts RGB color values to HSV.
- rgbyiq - Converts RGB color values to YIQ.
- yiqrgb - Converts YIQ color values to RGB.
- maximize_output
- This is not a new function, but one that hadn't been
documented. It allows you to maximize the size of plots that have been
drawn in a single frame.
- status_exit
- A new version of the exit procedure that allows
the user to pass an exit status code to the operating system.
- vintp2p_ecmwf
- Interpolates data at multidimensional pressure levels to constant
pressure coordinates and uses an ECMWF formulation to extrapolate
values below ground.
New functionality
- stat2, stat4,
stat_medrng, stat_trim,
dim_stat4
- These functions were updated so that if a subsection of the input
is all missing, a fatal error is no longer issued. Rather, all missing
values will be returned in the appropriate locations in the output
array.
- system
- This function was updated to allow the user to turn off paging of
output from this command, if desired.
New resources
- cnLabelBarEndStyle
- This resource allows you to select from among three styles for the
ends of contour plot labelbar. The cnLabelBarEndLabelsOn resource is now
deprecated and replaced with this one.
Performance enhancements
- The GRIB code was improved to eliminate unnecessary memory usage when reading a
variable that contains "missing" records. (Missing records occur when a GRIB file
does not have records corresponding to all the elements of its dimensions as defined by NCL.)
Formerly NCL created an array filled with missing values for each missing record.
Now it only creates a single such array for each distinct grid in the file and
shares this array among all the missing records of each variable that shares the grid.
- Along with the above change, the ncl_convert2nc script
was modified to copy very large variables in multiple chunks using
loops and subscripting. Given large enough variables (greater than
250 MB), this can dramatically reduce memory requirements on the
system without adversely affecting execution time.
Bug fixes
- wmstnm - correction to the wind barb directions when
station model data is displayed over a map.
- v5d_write - fixed a bug whereby input values for the number
of timesteps and the number of variables were tested improperly. Documentation has
been updated to reflect this fix, and the proper calling sequence for this function.
- The NCL object table code was reworked to remove a limit of 2^31 - 1 on the total
number of objects that could be created. The table was also reconfigured to improve performance
for complex scripts where very large numbers of objects are created.
- The exit procedure now ensures that graphics and data files are properly
closed before NCL's execution ends.
Version 4.3.1
10 August 2007
ARW WRF functions
Added a suite of routines
to aid in visualizing ARW WRF model data.
wrf_contour - Creates a contour
plot from ARW WRF model output.
wrf_map - Creates a map
background for ARW WRF model data.
wrf_map_overlay - Overlays
different plot id's over a map background.
wrf_map_zoom - Zooms into a
portion of the ARW WRF model domain, and creates a map background.
wrf_overlay - Overlays multiple
plots, created from other ARW WRF plot functions.
wrf_user_getvar - Extracts data
from ARW WRF model output, and does basic diagnostics calculations.
wrf_user_intrp3d - Interpolates
ARW WRF model data vertically or horizontally.
wrf_latlon_to_ij (built-in function) - updated to
return missing values if any of the input lat/lon values are
out-of-range.
wrf_user_list_times - Extracts
the list of available times in the ARW WRF model output.
wrf_vector - Creates a vector
plot from ARW WRF model output.
Partial support for NetCDF 4
For some systems (*), you can now specify a "Format" of
"NetCDF4Classic" in the setfileoption procedure to
create a file using the NetCDF 4 classic model format. The classic
model constrains the interface to the constructs provided by NetCDF 3
and earlier. However, the underlying file format, like that of all
NetCDF 4 files, is HDF 5. Files written in this format can take
advantage of the built-in file compression available in HDF 5. Use the
"CompressionLevel" option to enable compression. Also the HDF 5 format
removes virtually all restrictions on file and individual variable
size. NCL version 4.3.1 provides beta-level support for this format
because NetCDF 4 and the release of HDF 5 that it depends on are both
still in the beta-testing phase of development. It should probably not
be used for mission-critical file creation.
This option is not required for reading NetCDF 4 classic files. If
your version of NCL supports NetCDF 4 (*), then it will be able to automatically
detect whether you have a NetCDF 3 or 4 file.
(*) Some systems
(like any 64-bit system) do not have support for NetCDF 4 because the
NetCDF 4 software has not yet been ported and/or tested on those
systems. You can quickly tell if your version of NCL has NetCDF 4
support by running ncl interactively and typing one line:
setfileoption("nc","format","netcdf4classic")
If you get a warning message:
warning:FileSetFileOption: invalid value supplied for option format
then your version of NCL does not have NetCDF 4 support. If your
version does have NetCDF 4 support, then you can further
control the level of compression with:
setfileoption("nc","compressionlevel",5)
The third argument can be any value from 1 to 9, where 9 is the highest
level of compression. See the setfileoption documentation
for more information.
New functions
- dim_sum_wgt_Wrap
- Computes the weighted sum of a variable's rightmost dimension at
all other dimensions *and* retains metadata.
- eofunc_varimax_reorder
- Reorder the results returned by eof_varimax into
descending order by percent variance explained.
- filwgts_lanczos
- Calculates one-dimensional filter weights. This is not a
new function, but a renaming of the old
filwgts_lancos function. The old function will
remain intact for backwards compatibility.
- dim_sum_wgt_Wrap
- Computes the weighted sum of a variable's rightmost dimension at
all other dimensions and retains metadata.
- Suite of gc_xxxx functions
-
gc_aangle - finds the acute angle between two great
circles on the globe.
gc_clkwise - tests clockwise/counterclockwise
ordering of points on spherical polygon.
gc_dangle - finds the directed angle between two
great circles having a specified intersection point.
gc_inout - determines if a specified point is
inside or outside of a spherical polygon.
gc_onarc - determines if a point on the globe lies
on a specified great circle arc.
gc_pnt2gc - finds the angular distance from a point
to a great circle.
gc_qarea - finds the area of a quadrilateral patch
on the unit sphere.
gc_tarea - finds the area of a triangular patch on
the unit sphere.
- getVarFillValue
- Retrieves the missing value of a
variable; otherwise, it returns the default _FillValue.
- poisson_grid_fill
- Replaces all _FillValue values in a grid with values derived from
solving Poisson's equation via relaxation.
Low-level three-dimensional visualization routines
A suite of 3D visualization
routines based on the low-level TDPACK package were added. There are
too many to list here, but you can see them by visiting the graphics
routines page, and looking at the functions that start with
"td".
New functionality
- betainc - missing values are now recognized
and handled accordingly.
- write_matrix - updated to handle
data of type short and byte.
- setfileoption - fundamental change in the
writing of netCDF files - the "SuppressClose" and "DefineMode" options
now both default to True. Also, the addition of the "NetCDF4Classic"
value for the "Format" option. See the section on partial support for NetCDF 4.
In previous versions, when you wrote data to a netCDF file, the netCDF
file was opened and closed before and after every write. You could
turn this off by using setfileoption to set the
"SuppressClose" option to True. This is now the default, which should
improve performance.
In previous versions, also, the "DefineMode" option was set to False
by default, which meant that each write operation was performed
atomically. It now defaults to True, which can improve performance
dramatically if care is taken to define all dimensions, attributes,
and variables and assign attribute values before writing actual data
to the file.
- stringtodouble - updated to recognize 'd' and
'D' as additional double-specific exponent specifiers optionally
substituting for 'e' and 'E'.
- New options "-itime" and "-ftime" in ncl_convert2nc and ncl_filedump
New resources
- gsnDebugWriteFileName - a resource to
help facilitate the debugging of NCL gsn_xxxx and gsn_csm_xxxx
visualization scripts.
If you set this resource to a string and rerun the plotting script you
are having problems with, then it will write the data being plotting
and the plot resources and their values to a new netCDF file. It will
also create a new NCL script that reads in this new netCDF file and
sets all the same plot options, so that your plot can be recreated
identically. This prevents users from having to send us their full
scripts and data. The new files will be called xxx.nc,
xxx.ncl, and
xxx.res, where xxx is what the resource
is set to.
To use this resource before version 4.3.1 is available, download gsn_code.ncl.debug and gsn_csm.ncl.debug,
put them in $NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/csm (or wherever you want),
and then load these scripts instead of the original ones:
load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/csm/gsn_code.ncl.debug"
load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/csm/gsn_csm.ncl.debug"
Rerun your script with res@gsnDebugWriteFileInfo set to whatever
string you like, and then you can give us the resultant new
netCDF and NCL script.
Bugs fixed
- ShadeCOI - fixed a bug
in which the function would fail if the input "time" variable was
not a float.
- triple2grid - fixed a serious bug. Please
see the function documentation for more information.
- Fixed a problem encountered in reading a netCDF file where the
data variable type was float, there was no _FillValue, but there was a
missing_value attribute of type double. Since "MissingToFillValue" is True
by default, NCL was creating a virtual _FillValue of the same type and
value as the missing_value. This resulted in NCL becoming confused
when the file variable was assigned to a regular variable because the
_FillValue attribute of regular variables is not allowed to be
anything other than the same type as the variable.
This is being fixed by overriding the MissingToFillValue setting and
refusing to create the virtual _FillValue. The following warning is
issued for each such variable:
warning:NetOpenFile: MissingToFillValue option set True, but missing_value
attribute and data variable (x) types differ: not adding virtual _FillValue
attribute
- Fixed a problem with reading a NetCDF file when a 1D variable and
a dimension name have the same name, but the 1D variable is not a
coordinate variable and is a different size from the dimension it
shares a name with.
- Fixed a problem in the GRIB1 reader that resulted in a core dump when
reading files that contain GDS grids of the same type but different sizes.
Version 4.3.0
1 May 2007
This version of NCL includes a new GRIB2 reader. GRIB2 files are
supported by addfile, addfiles,
ncl_filedump, and ncl_convert2nc.
Detailed information is available in the "Information
on supported data formats" section of the
NCL Reference Manual.
- NCL now supports GRIB files containing ensemble forecasts with multiple ensemble members or
probability forecasts (which are derived from ensemble forecasts) with multiple thresholds.
These files are represented with an "ensemble" or "probability" dimension. Actually the ensemble
dimension (but not the probability dimension) has been available since 4.2.0.a34 but was inadvertently
not mentioned in those release notes. These dimensions will be described in
more detail in the "Information
on supported data formats" section of the
NCL Reference Manual.
- A new GRIB file option named "SingleElementDimensions"
allows the user to specify that variables with
only a single initial time, forecast time, level,
ensemble or probability value, usually handled as attributes, be treated as
containing single element dimensions. The option allows any or
all of these attributes to be turned into dimensions provided they have an
actual value. This is described in more detail in the
setfileoption procedure documentation.
- Fundamental change to reading of GRIB1
files - the default type for the "initial_time" coordinate
array has been changed from "string" to "numeric".
Prior to version 4.3.0, NCL used an array of strings to represent
the coordinate values of an initial time dimension. This
representation proved to be problematic, both because it did not
conform to standard CF and COARDS conventions, and because it was
difficult to use in a context where numerical properties such as
monotonicity were usually expected.
To change the type back to "string", you can set the
"InitialTimeCoordinateType" option in the
setfileoption procedure:
setfileoption ("grb","InitialTimeCoordinateType","string")
- Change to default algorithm used for dealing
with thinned grids on a GRIB file - the default used to be
linear interpolation, but since cubic interpolation has been shown to
produce better results, we've made cubic interpolation the default.
To change the type back to "linear", you can set the
"ThinnedGridInterpolation" option in the
setfileoption procedure:
setfileoption ("grb","ThinnedGridInterpolation","linear")
"Linear" is still the default for bitmask arrays.
Prior to version 4.3.0, getFillValue would return the default
_FillValue if a variable did not have _FillValue associated with
it.
For example, in the line below:
q = new( 10, typeof(w), getFillValue(w))
if "w" is of type "float" and if "w" did not have a _FillValue, then
getFillValue would return the
_FillValue for a variable of type "float". Hence,
q@_FillValue = -999. In some cases this result was not
desired.
In release a034, the string "No_FillValue" was introduced for use
within the new statement. Use of "No_FillValue"
as the third argument of new would result
in no _FillValue being assigned to "q".
A side effect of this new behavior is that the following will result
in a fatal error:
q@_FillValue = getFillValue(w)
if the variable has no _FillValue associated with it. The reason
is the the string "No_FillValue" can not be assigned to "q"
unless q is of type string.
It should be noted that getFillValue was only intended to be used
within the new statement.
- The GRIB1 reader can now handle files that are greater than 2GB in size.
- The built-in GRIB1 parameter tables describing data from the DWD
(German National Meteorological Service) have been updated to reflect new
variables. As well, new tables have been added. These updated and new tables
are referenced in the
NCL Reference Manual
section for GRIB data.
- NCL now recognizes a DWD-specific extension that allows it to distinguish between satellite image
records that all have the same parameter number and parameter table version.
- NCL also recognizes the DWD convention for specifying hybrid level values.
- The GRIB1 reader has been modified to handle varying
time units for variables that have records with different time units
indicators. See:
http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/docs/on388/table4.html
If in parsing a record that belongs to a particular variable it
encounters a time unit indicator different from the established
indicator, it compares them and chooses the one with the shortest
duration to be the common unit. Then it sets the time period for each
record based on converting it into the common units. For periods of a
month or greater, this is currently not entirely accurate, because it
is based on a year of 365.25 days and the average number of hours in a
month. However, because no files of this type have yet been
encountered (and may never be), it does not seem worthwhile to develop
anything more accurate at this point. The code does print warnings
(probably too many) if this situation is encountered.
- The GRIB1 reader prints more variable attributes. An attribute called parameter_table_version
contains the parameter table version to which the variable parameter number belongs. If forecast_time
is an attribute (no forecast_time dimension is associated with the variable) an associated attribute called
forecast_time_units gives the units of the forecast_time value.
- cumsum
- Calculates the cumulative sum.
- dim_cumsum
(dim_cumsum_Wrap)
- Calculates the cumulative sum along the rightmost dimension (and
retains metadata).
- dpres_plevel
(dpres_plevel_Wrap)
- Calculates the pressure layer thicknesses of a constant pressure
level coordinate system (and retains metadata).
- fft2db
- Performs a two-dimensional discrete backward Fourier
transform (Fourier synthesis).
- fft2df
- Performs a two-dimensional discrete forward Fourier
transform (i.e., Fourier analysis) of a real periodic array
- gsn_contour_shade
- Shades contour regions given low and/or high values using colors or patterns.
- gsn_table
- Draws a table with text.
- ind_nearest_coord
- Determines indices of locations closest to a coordinate array.
- indStrSubset
- Returns the indices corresponding to the location of the
substring, if it is a subset of the other given string.
- isStrSubset
- Returns True or False if one string is a subset of another string.
- mod
- Emulates the Fortran "mod" intrinsic function.
- printMinMax
- Prints the minimum and maximum values of a variable.
- student_t
- Calculates the two-tailed probability of the Student-t distribution.
- where
- Performs array assignments based on a conditional array.
- cz2ccm
- This function was updated to allow "phis" to be three dimensions.
- eofunc
- The scaled eigenvalues are now returned.
- eofunc_varimax
- Previously, this function (a) did not return the percent
variance explained and (b) did not allow missing (_FillValues).
Both issues have been addressed. Additional options have been
added to specify the form of the returned matrix.
- fbindirread, fbindirwrite,
fbinrecread, fbinrecwrite,
fbinnumrec
- These functions were updated to allow reads and writes of files
that are greater than 2 GB in size. Note that this change allows you
to access records that occur past the 2 GB point in the file, but not
to read into variables that would be larger than 2 GB. Thus, there is
no improvement to cbinread,
cbinwrite, fbinread,
fbinwrite because they read/write the complete file
starting from the beginning into or out of a single variable.
- gsn_histogram
- Added three new attributes: BeginBarLocs, MidBarLocs, and
EndBarLocs. See histogram
example 12 for usage.
- hyi2hyo
- If the intflg argument is set to one,values outside
of the input pressure range will be set to the values of the
closest input pressure value.
- getFillValue
- Updated so that if no _FillValue or missing_value attribute is
present, it does not return a _FillValue.
- pres2hybrid
- Now allows two options for extrapolating the data.
- print, printVarSummary, printFileVarSummary
- All the printing procedures have been updated to print the actual values of array-valued attributes instead of
the notation
<ARRAY> as long as the array has 10 or fewer elements.
- vinth2p_ecmwf
- This function was updated to allow "datai" to be five dimensions.
- wmbarb
- Recognizes data with missing values and does not plot wind
barbs in those places. Also, can now input arrays of any dimension.
- wmbarbmap
- Recognizes data with missing values and does not plot wind
barbs in those places.
- gsnContourPosLineDashPattern
- Allows you to set a dash pattern for contour lines above
the value 0.0.
- gsnPanelXF, gsnPanelYF
- Allows you to change the X and Y positions of the upper left
corner of individual plots in a set of paneled plots. See example 19 in the panel applications page.
- gsnPanelDebug
- If set to True, turns on debug information for gsn_panel. See example 19 in the panel applications page.
- Fix to annoying "<identifier> IS A FUNCTION NOT A PROCEDURE" fatal
error mesage.
- Before this version, if you called an NCL function but treated it
as a procedure (i.e. didn't assign it to a variable), you would get a
useless error message:
fatal:syntax error: <identifier> IS A FUNCTION NOT A PROCEDURE
This has been fixed so you should now get the name of the function, as
well as the line number it occurred on. For example:
ncl 0> abs(-1)
fatal:syntax error: abs is a function not a procedure; return value must be referenced
fatal:error at line 0
ncl 1>
- Bug in clmMon2clmDay
- The linint1_Wrap function was invoked
prior to being loaded within contributed.ncl. This will be fixed in 4.3.0,
but you can fix it yourself by moving clmMon2clmDay
after linint1_Wrap is defined.
- Bug in dtrend and dtrend_msg
- If return_info was set to True, and the input y
was double and had more than one dimension, then you would get a
segmentation fault or incorrect results.
- Bug in reading HDF variable attributes of type string that have
null characters in them.
- If NCL read in an HDF file that had an attribute with null
characters in it, then the attribute value was truncated at that first
null character. This bug has been fixed, and the null characters are
replaced with a single space (but only if there are more non-null
characters after it).
- Memory leak fixed
- A user reported a memory leak problem in which the way you
implement a logical expression in an "if" statement had a serious
effect on your code if executed multiple times. The code:
if (flags(x)) then
was not working as efficiently as this code:
if (flags(x).eq.True) then
- Optimization problem (not a bug!) with hyi2hyo
on Linux systems.
- There was an odd optimization problem with
hyi2hyo on Linux systems that would cause it to
think you were trying to pass in a 1D array for xi, when you
indeed had a 3D array.
- Bug in lspoly
- lspoly would only work if the input was float
or double.
- Bug in 'mpSpecifiedFill[Colors,Patterns,Scales] resources
- The mpSpecifiedFillColors,
mpSpecifiedFillPatterns, and mpSpecifiedFillScales resources were not
working because of changes introduced to handle subarea group
designators such as "counties" and "states".
- Bug in numAsciiRow
- If you call numAsciiRow, it
may appear to hang. This will be fixed in 4.3.0, but you can fix it
yourself by editing the file:
$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/csm/contributed.ncl
and changing the line:
nrow_s = systemfunc("'wc' -l" + fNam +" | awk '{print $1}'" )
to have a space after the "-l":
nrow_s = systemfunc("'wc' -l " + fNam +" | awk '{print $1}'" )
- Bug in rtest
- rtest did not check the size of the Nr
argument. Now if Nr<3 the returned value(s) will be set
to the appropriate _FillValue.
Version 4.2.0.a034
26 September 2006
New applications
- ncl_convert2nc
- Converts one or more GRIB, HDF and/or HDF-EOS files to netCDF
formatted files. Note: this application is replacing
ncl_grib2nc which
has been deprecated in this release.
New functions
- array_append_record
- Attaches [appends] additional records [leftmost dimension]
to a previously existing array.
- cdft_p
- Calculates the probability given a t-value and the degrees of
freedom.
- cdft_t
- Calculates the t-value given the probability and the degrees of
freedom.
- clmMon2clmDay
- Creates a daily climatology from a monthly climatology.
- delete_VarAtts
- Deletes one or more attributes
associated with a variable.
- dim_avg_wgt
and dim_avg_wgt_Wrap
- Computes the weighted average of a variable's rightmost dimension
at all other dimensions. The _Wrap version of this function retains
metadata.
- dim_sum_wgt
- Computes the weighted sum of a variable's rightmost dimension at
all other dimensions. dim_sum_wgt_Wrap, which retains metadata,
was inadvertently not added in this version. (It will be added in
version 4.3.1.) If you need this function, email Dennis Shea.
- erf/erfc
- Evaluates the real error function and
the real complementary error function respectively.
- get_file_suffix
- Returns the suffix of a file name.
- gsn_add_annotation
- Adds an annotation to a plot.
- gsn_create_labelbar
- Creates a labelbar. This function is similar to the
procedure gsn_labelbar_ndc, except
it returns the id of the labelbar, which can then be used with
functions like gsn_add_annotation.
- gsn_create_legend
- Creates a legend. This function is similar to the
procedure gsn_legend_ndc, except
it returns the id of the legend, which can then be used with
functions like gsn_add_annotation.
- isbigendian
- Returns True if you are on a big endian machine.
- isMonotonic
- Checks one-dimensional array for monoticity.
- loadscript
- Loads the given NCL script.
- lspoly
- Calculates a set of coefficients for a weighted least squares
polynomial fit to the given data.
- niceLatLon2D
- Checks two-dimensional latitude and longitude arrays for "nice"
structure.
- pres2hybrid and pres2hybrid_Wrap
- Interpolates data on constant pressure levels to hybrid levels.
- rho_mwjf
- Computes ocean water density given a specified range for potential
temperature (deg Celisus) and salinity (psu).
- rip_cape_2d
- Computes convective available potential energy (CAPE), convective
inhibition (CIN), lifted condensation level (LCL), and level of free
convection (LFC).
- rip_cape_3d
- Computes convective available potential energy (CAPE) and
convective inhibition (CIN).
- stdatmus_p2tdz
- Calculates the corresponding temperature, density, and height
based on the 1976 U.S. standard atmosphere, given the pressure.
- stdatmus_z2tdp
- Calculates the corresponding temperature, density, and pressure
based on the 1976 U.S. standard atmosphere, given the height.
- strlen
- Returns the length of a string variable.
- table_attach_rows
- Attaches [appends] additional rows to a previously
existing two-dimensional [table] array.
- wgt_vert_avg_beta
- Computes weighted vertical average or sum using pressure thickness
and beta factors.
- wrf_rh, wrf_tk
- Calculate relative humidity and temperature from WRF model output.
- yyyymmdd_to_yyyyfrac
- Converts a one dimensional array containing yyyymmdd values to
yyyy and fractional year.
- yyyymmddhh_to_yyyyfrac
- Converts a one dimensional array containing yyyymmddhh values to
yyyy and fractional year.
New functionality
- new statement
- The new statement has a new value you can use for the
optional third argument: "No_FillValue". If you set this, then the
variable created by new will not have a _FillValue attribute
attached to it, and the values in the variable will be undefined.
- NCL can now parse MS-DOS style end-of-line characters.
- These characters sometimes show up as "^M" or "\r" characters in
certain ASCII editors.
- Strings in NCL can now be longer than 256 characters.
- NCL was updated so that you can now have strings longer than 256
characters, within the memory limitations of the system, of course.
Note that symbols (variable, dimension, and attribute names) still are
limited in length to 256 characters.
- abs and fabs
- The abs function will supercede
fabs, as it will accept all supported numeric data
types, and its return value will be of the same type as its input.
Function fabs will continue to be available, and
support the float and double data types only.
- gc_latlon
- This function was updated to allow multi-dimensional input
for the latitude, longitude arrays.
- setfileoption
- This function was updated to include two more options:
DefaultNCEPPTable and MissingToFillValue.
- stat2, stat4,
stat_trim, stat_medrng
- These functions were updated to allow numeric input, and float or
double output.
- triple2grid
- This function was updated to allow the third argument to be
multi-dimensional.
- vinth2p
- This function was updated to allow the first argument to have up to
5 dimensions.
New resources
- mpMaskOutlineSpecifiers and
mpOutlineMaskingOn.
- These resources allow you to turn on map outline masking and
indicate which outlined map areas you want to "mask" from your
plot. They should be used in conjunction with mpOutlineSpecifiers and/or mpOutlineBoundarySets.
Important bug fixes
- Bug in exp_tapersh procedure
- We fixed a bug in which if your input values were not double, the
weights aren't being applied to the data, and hence you got the same
values back.
- Bug in single value coordinate subscripting, when coordinate values
were decreasing.
- We fixed a bug in which if you had decreasing coordinate array values,
and you selected a single value using coordinate subscripting, NCL was
returning the wrong closest index.
- Bug in coordinate array returned for a variable that was
created by reversing the stride of an existing variable, e.g.
b = a(1::-2)
- We fixed the above bug, and it will be in the next release of NCL.
- Bug in line number reporting for NCL error messages.
- Sometimes the line numbers for NCL error messages were off by
one. This has been fixed in this release.
- Bug if you didn't have a newline after the very last line
in your NCL script.
- In previous versions of NCL, if you didn't have a
after the very last line in your NCL script, you would
get a confusing and fatal error message:
fatal:syntax error: line -1 before or near
This has been fixed in this release, and you won't get any error
message.
- Bug in shsgC/shsgc
- A user discovered a bug in these functions that would cause NaNs
(not-a-number) to be returned if the input variable was over a certain
size. The latest version of the Spherepack library (V3.1) fixes this
problem, so we incorporated this library into this version of NCL.
- GRIB bugs
- There was a "bug" encountered with the monthly GODAS files where
monthly average variables were given different names depending on the
number of days in the month. Now, if the calculations work out
properly to show that the first day of the time period is the 1st day
of the month and the last day of the time period is the last day of
the month, then the suffix applied is "ave1m" instead of
"aveXXd". Leap years are accounted for.
- There was a bug in GRIB code's handling of time indicator index 10
in which the indicator index wasn't being tacked on to the variable
name.
- Paging bug with print functions
- If you used printing functions like print or
printVarSummary interactively in version
a033, the output would scroll continuously and not allow paging.
- Bug with setting NCL_DEF_SCRIPTS_DIR or NCL_DEF_LIB_DIR to invalid
directories.
- If you set the environment variables NCL_DEF_SCRIPTS_DIR
or NCL_DEF_LIB_DIR to
invalid directories, you may get a bus error or a segmentation fault,
followed by a core dump. To work around this problem, don't set these
environment variables, or set them to valid directories.
- Bug in with using markers in an XY plot when missing values
were present.
- We fixed a bug in which if you were generating an XY plot with
markers, and your X or Y values contained missing values, the markers
were still appearing.
Version 4.2.0.a033
23 January 2006
Command line arguments and options
The next version of NCL will have a long-requested enhancement added,
and that is the ability to include options and arguments on the NCL
command line. For more information and some examples, see the
"Command line arguments and
options" section in the NCL
Reference Manual.
Command line tools
- ncl_filedump
- Prints the contents of supported files (netCDF, HDF, GRIB,
HDF-EOS2, and CCM History Tape).
- ncl_grib2nc
- Converts NCL-supported GRIB files to netCDF-formatted files.
New functions
- calcDayAnomTLL
- Calculates daily anomalies from a daily climatology.
- cancor
- Performs canonical correlation analysis between two sets of variables.
- clmDayTLL
- Calculates daily climatology from daily mean data.
- echo_on/echo_off
- These procedures toggle the echoing of NCL statements as they are
encountered. You can use them in conjunction with the new "-x" command
line option.
- generate_2d_array
- Generates a "nice" 2D array of pseudo random data, especially for
use in 2D graphics.
- gsn_csm_xy3
- Creates and draws an XY plot with three different Y axes.
This function is similar to gsn_csm_xy2 except it allows three vertical
scales for three different quantities.
- hyi2hyo, hyi2hyo_Wrap
- Interpolates from data on one set of hybrid levels to data another
set of hybrid levels.
- local_min_1d, local_max_1d
- Determines the relative minima/maxima for a 1-dimensional array.
- omega_ccm, omega_ccm_driver
- Calculates omega (vertical pressure velocity) using the model
diagnostic method.
- pack_values
- Compress (pack) values of type float or double to values of type short or byte.
- setfileoption
- This procedure allows the user to set a number of
file-format-specific options. It has an option to determine the
algorithm used for expanding thinned data from a GRIB file, an option
for indicating whether a binary file should be read or written as big
endian or little endian, and several options for the writing of netCDF
files which can significantly speed up this process.
- shsgc_R42, shsgc_R42_Wrap
- Computes spherical harmonic synthesis of a scalar quantity via
rhomboidally truncated (R42) spherical harmonic coefficients onto a
(108x128) gaussian grid.
- smthClmDayTLL
- Calculates a smooth mean daily annual cycle.
- yyyymm_time
-
Creates a one-dimensional array containing year-month [yyyymm] values.
- yyyymm_to_yyyyfrac
-
Converts a one dimensional array containing yyyymm values
to yyyy and fractional year [eg: 1973.25]. Most
frequently used to create a one-dimensional array used
for "x-y" plots.
- z2geouv
- Computes the geostrophic zonal and meridional wind components
using geopotential height.
New functionality
- asciiread
- This function has been enhanced in the reading of float
values to avoid treating "nan" or "inf" as numeric values if they
occur as part of a word such as "nanny" or "infidel".
- copy_VarCoords
- Made this function more flexible; it can now handle the tasks that
copy_VarCoords_1 and copy_VarCoords_2 used to do.
- gsn_histogram
- A new resource called gsnHistogramBarWidthPercent has been created that
allows you to specify the width of the histogram bars as a percentage
of the width of the bin that it falls in. The values must be in the
range 0 to 100, and they must be smaller for comparison histograms.
- New map projections
- Two new map projections have been added, "CylindricalEqualArea"
and "RotatedMercator". For more information, see the mpProjection resource in the list
of map (mp)
resources.
- Line resources in map (mp) resources
- Enabled support for the "transparent" color index for
the following map line resources:
- Any gsn_csm non-map
plotting script.
- Previously, for functions like gsn_csm_vector and gsn_csm_contour, the special "lat2d" and
"lon2d" attributes were not recognized. This is because generally, you
only want to use this kind of information when you are creating a
contour or vector plot over map.
However, if you want to overlay
multiple contour and/or vector plots on a map, you need to be able to
create them using gsn_csm_vector and
gsn_csm_contour so you can
then use them in an overlay call.
So, the "lat2d" and "lon2d" special attributes are now recognized
by these kind of gsn_csm routines.
- natgrid, natgrids,
natgridd
- These functions now do automatic culling of duplicate input
coordinate points. Given this, the previous "dup" parameter has
been made obsolete.
- psplit
- Added a "-c" option that flags psplit to simply report the
number of pages in the input file and exit.
- Printing strings that contain missing values.
- If you try to concatenate a value that a missing to a valid
string, and then print the string, you would getting nothing
but a missing value:
x = new(1,float)
print("x = " + x)
would produce:
(0) -999
With the next release of NCL, you will get:
(0) x = -999
Important bug fixes
- eofunc
- The version of eofunc in Version 4.2.0.a032 had an error.
The exact nature of the error was never determined. Prior
to release in a032, the eofunc function had been tested by five
different people and all agreed it was correct. After release of a032,
some users reported small differences with previous results. One
user reported a major problem. As a result, the eofunc
documentation was modified to include a notice printed in red that recommended
that users use the older eofcov or eofcor
functions.
The new eofunc included in a033
uses a completely different program to calculate EOFs.
- GRIB reader
- In the last release (4.2.0.a032) of NCL, two new time variables
were introduced for GRIB data being read in. Of these, the new variable
"initial_time0_hours" (units: "hours since 1800-01-01 00:00") was
found to be off by 48 hours. The other time related variables
"initial_time0_encoded" (units "yyyymmddhh.hh_fraction") and
"initial_time0" (units "mm/dd/yyyy (hh:mm)") are correct.
This "off by 48 hours" has been fixed for a033.
The a032 temporary work-around was as follows:
for times after 1900-01-01 00:00, 48 hours had to be
added to the values returned by NCL.
The second "fix" to the GRIB reader was not so much a fix as a removal
of a hard-coded upper limit for the size of lat/lon arrays for thinned
grids.
- linmsg
- This function was not correctly handling the case where a whole row
of points was missing.
- qsort
- A problem was fixed in which the following short script was using
up a bunch of memory:
begin
do i = 0,200
print((/i/))
x1D = new((/4000000/),integer)
x1D = 1
qsort(x1D)
delete(x1D)
end do
end
- solve_linsys
- This function was not working correctly if the leftmost dimension
of B was not the same as the rightmost dimension.
- vcMapDirection
- Fixed a bug where this resource was not taking effect when
in curly vector mode.
Version 4.2.0.a032
6 December 2004
New and updated functionality
- Contouring non-uniform grids
In recent years, many new non-uniform grids have become popular and
these are being processed by new algorithms to reduce them to triangle
meshes and to contour directly on these triangles, rather than
interpolating to a uniform grid and contouring.
For more information, see the short document
on non-uniform grids that NCL can contour, and the following
example sections: SEAM (HOMME)
grids, Geodesic
grids, and Adaptive grids.
- addfile/addfiles
File suffixes recognized by these two functions are now case
insensitive. For example, ".nc" and ".NC" are both recognized as
representing netCDF files.
- OPeNDAP-enabled
NCL
NCL now has OPeNDAP
(formerly known as "DODS") capabilities built into it, but only for systems that OPeNDAP is supported on
(Linux, Solaris, AIX). What this means is that you can use functions
like addfile and isfilepresent
to access netCDF datasets served by an OPenDAP server.
Here's an example and also a way to test if your version of NCL is
OPeNDAP-enabled:
begin
;
; The URL is so long, break it into two pieces.
;
url = "http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/nph-nc/Datasets/"
filename = "ncep.reanalysis.dailyavgs/pressure/air.1948.nc"
exists = isfilepresent(url+filename)
if(.not.exists) then
print("OPeNDAP test unsuccessful.")
print("Either the file doesn't exist, or NCL does not have")
print("OPeNDAP capabilities on this system")
else
f = addfile(url + filename,"r")
;
; "variables" should be equal to
; (/"air","time","lon","lat","level"/)
;
variables = getfilevarnames(f)
end if
end
- New special resources for contour lines: gsnContourZeroLineThicknessF, gsnContourLineThicknessesScale, and gsnContourNegLineDashPattern.
Respectively, these resources allow you to specify the line
thickness of the zero contour, specify a scale factor to apply to the
current line thicknesses, and specify a dash pattern for negative
contours. For some examples, see the contour effects
examples.
- New EOF functions
The eofunc* suite of three functions
(eofunc, eofunc_ts,
eofunc_varimax) implements a more efficient method
for computing EOFs. The previous suite of EOF functions will be
available but should be replaced by the eofunc* functions.
- get_ncl_version
Returns the NCL version as a string.
- gsn_add_text,
gsn_text,
gsn_text_ndc
The input X, Y, and text arrays are no longer restricted to be
1-dimensional. If they are multi-dimensional, they must be the same
dimensions as each other. Any one of them can be a scalar.
- Any gsn_csm polar
plotting script.
The font for the longitude labels and gsnRightString, gsnLeftString, and gsnCenterString were all defaulting to
"helvetica-bold," which is inconsistent with the rest of the gsn_csm
plotting scripts, whose labels default to "helvetica".
These fonts were changed to be just "helvetica", which
means you may notice a difference when generating polar plots with
this version of NCL.
To keep the polar longitude labels and/or three top subtitles set to
"helvetica-bold", you need to set:
res@gsnPolarLabelFont = "helvetica-bold"
res@gsnStringFont = "helvetica-bold"
- New functions: gsn_csm_xy2,
gsn_csm_x2y, and gsn_csm_x2y2
These functions are similar to gsn_csm_xy, only they allow you to have a
different axis system on one or both of the top X and bottom right
axis.
- GRIB file work-around for reading GRIB files from the IPCC Data
Distribution Center (http://cera-www.dkrz.de/IPCC_DDC/).
Several unrecognized centers are used for these files. The
work-around code is activated when an unrecognized center is
encountered.
User-defined parameter tables are still needed and NCL does not
attempt to supply a name for the center.
- Three new ECMWF GRIB tables added
132: Extreme forecast index
162: Usage: ECMWF re-analysis, ERA40
200: Usage: Differences between first guess and analysis
- Two additional time variables are provided when GRIB
data are read.
These new variables, which are of type "double", contain the same
information as the current initial_time(n) variables which are of type
"string". The two new variables are:
- initial_time(n)_hours: This has units of "hours since 1800-01-01
00:00".
- initial_time(n)_encoded: This has units of "yyyymmddhh.hh_frac".
- landsea_mask
Returns a grid that contains a land sea mask given any
(e.g. gaussian, fixed offset, curvilinear) latitude and longitude
array. The result can then be applied to any array on the same grid
using mask.
- simpeq
Integrates a sequence of equally spaced points using Simpson's
Rule.
- simpne
Integrates a sequence of unequally spaced points using Simpson's
three-point formula.
- triple2grid2d
Places randomly-spaced data onto the nearest locations of a grid
with two-dimensional latitude and longitude arrays.
- v5d_create
Creates a Vis5D+ formatted file.
- v5d_write
Writes compressed gridded data to a Vis5D+ formatted file.
- v5d_write_var
Writes a single gridded variable to a Vis5D+ formatted file.
- v5d_setLowLev
Sets the lowest vertical offset, per grid level, for each gridded
variable in a Vis5D+ formatted file.
- v5d_setUnits
Sets a name for physical units associated with a variable in a
Vis5D+ formatted file.
- v5d_close
Closes a Vis5D+ formatted file.
- wmbarbmap
Uses the wind barb functions from the Wmap package to draw wind
barbs over maps.
- New resources for zonal means plots
If you are creating a zonal means plots using the gsnZonalMean resource, then you now have access
to three new resources:
If you are wondering what a zonal mean plot is, see example 7 in
the list of color
examples.
Important bug fixes
- asciiread bug
A bug was fixed in asciiread which
caused it to read in lone periods (".") as float values equal to "0".
For example, if you had the string "The data file is called file.cdf",
it would treat the period in "file.cdf" as the value 0.
- Coordinate subscripting bug
If you subscripted an array using coordinate subscripting, and
gave it a "finish" subscript and not a "start" subscript, then you may
have gotten one extra coordinate value. For example, the simple script
below demonstrates this:
begin
level = (/1.5,2.5,3.5,4.5,5.5/)
lev = (/level/)
lev!0 = "lev"
lev&lev = level
lev1 = lev({:3})
lev2 = lev({0:3})
print(lev1)
print(lev2)
end
The two arrays lev1 and lev2 should be identical and
equal to (/1.5,2.5/). Before this bug fix, lev1 was
incorrectly getting the values (/1.5,2.5,3.5/).
- Another coordinate subscripting bug
If you tried to use coordinate subscripting without actually
using a subscript value, as in:
buf2 = buf({lev|:},{lon|:},{lat|30:50})
it would sometimes cause a core dump.
- Problems reading netCDF files that had multi-dimensional variables
with the same name as a dimension.
NCL is now tolerant of netCDF files where a multi-dimensional
variable has the same name as a dimension (in other words, something
that NCL saw as a coordinate variable, and wanted it to be
one-dimensional). NCL no longer assumes that a variable with the same
name as a dimension is a coordinate variable unless the variable has a
single dimension.
- And still another coordinate subscripting bug
There was a problem with coordinate array subselection using
double coordinate values: the coordinate values were only being
compared to float precision.
This fix allows the following code to execute correctly:
coord = (/1234.5678901230d,1234.5678901231d,1234.5678901232d,\
1234.5678901233d /)
h = (/ 4,5,6,7 /)
h!0 = "coord"
h&coord = coord
printVarSummary(h)
print(h&coord)
v1 = 1234.56789012305d
v2 = 1234.56789012311d
v = h({v1:v2})
print(v)
v = h({1234.56789012305d:1234.56789012319d})
print(v)
- Any gsn
plotting routine that does a frame advance
When you set the special resource gsnMaximize to True, this maximizes the size of
the plot(s) in the current frame. For PostScript or PDF output, the
maximization is done by computing something called device coordinates
that tells PS/PDF how the output is supposed to appear on the page.
Previously, if these device coordinates were not reset or recalculated
after the frame was advanced, then subsequent plots may not have been
drawn correctly in the frame.
This bug was fixed by having the device coordinates set back to their
original values, but only if the frame is advanced by the plotting
routine (that is, if you set gsnFrame to
False, then the device coordinates are not set back to their original
values).
You can reset the device coordinates yourself by calling the procedure:
reset_device_coordinates(wks)
This procedure should only be called after the frame is advance, and
before any drawing has occurred on the new frame.
- Problems with reading HDF files.
- Variable names now have non-alphanumeric characters replaced with
an underscore. Multiple underscores are collapsed to a single
underscore. This brings the HDF code in line with what has always been
documented.
- With respect to the above, each variable is now given an attribute
called "hdf_name", whose value is the original HDF variable name. This
may be a redundant piece of information, but it seems better to always
have it so that the user code does not have to check whether it
exists.
- Certain HDF files have SDS variables with identical names. They
are distinguished in the HDF file by belonging to different
hierarchically arranged "Vgroups", much like a directory structure in
a file system. These are now distinguished by appending a double
underscore followed by the Vgroup reference id to the variable name.
In addition, a text representation of the Vgroup hierarchy (with '/'
used as a separator) is added as an attribute called "hdf_group." The
group reference id is stored as an integer attribute called
"hdf_group_id." Here's an example fragment of calling "print" on a
file variable:
float Longwave_flux_minimum_value__316 ( day, region )
valid_range :
_FillValue : 3.402823e+38
long_name : Daily, Total-sky Averages
units : Watts per square meter
hdf_name : Longwave flux minimum value
hdf_group : Daily Averages/Total-Sky
hdf_group_id : 316
- Added caching for all HDF attributes, similar to the caching
implemented for the NetCDF module. This improves the performance of
printing the contents of large HDF files by several orders of
magnitude.
Version 4.2.0.a031
2 January 2004
New and updated functionality
- Contour line label density control
- An internal parameter's value was changed to fix the occasional
problem of getting no or very few contour line labels on a contour
plot. This may cause the default behavior to change for some contour
plots, if you are setting the resource cnLineLabelPlacementMode to "Computed" or
"Randomized" (i.e. you might see more contour line labels). The
"Constant" mode is unaffected by this change.
You also now have better control over the density of contour line
labels using the new resource cnLineLabelDensityF. This resource allows
a simple (though inexact) method for controlling the number of line
labels on a ContourPlot for both the "Randomized" and "Computed" line
label placement modes. It has no effect for the "Constant" mode, which
depends on cnLineDashSegLenF to
determine the spacing.
If cnLineLabelDensityF is set to
its default value of 0.0, it has no effect, and the line label spacing
can be controlled using the cnConpackParams resource as always. If
cnLineLabelDensityF is set to 1.0, then the default settings of the
appropriate Conpack parameters apply, overriding any that are set by
cnConpackParams. As cnLineLabelDensityF is set to values greater than
1.0, the number of labels increases, while setting it to positive
values less than 1.0 causes the number of labels to decrease.
- eof2data
- Uses the output of eofcov and
eofcov_ts to construct a data array.
- eofcor, eofcov,
eofcor_pcmsg, eofcov_pcmsg
- Added an attribute called eof_function to indicate which
EOF function was used.
- eofcor_pcmsg, eofcov_pcmsg
- Updated to return pcrit as an attribute.
- Any gsn_csm
map script that can draw a Lambert Conformal plot.
- The ability to mask out areas of a Lambert Conformal plot to
produce a plot similar to example 5 in the suite of CSM polar examples
has been added. For an example, click on the script lambert.ncl and its resource file, or see its output.
- Any gsn_csm
plotting script that uses the "long_name" attribute to label an axis.
- In addition to the "long_name" attribute, if any other attributes
with the name "standard_name", "description", or "DataFieldName" are
present, they will be used in the labeling of gsn_csm
plot templates. (If more than one of these attributes are present,
then the first one encountered in the above list will be used.) Also,
some more acceptable values for the "units" attribute were added,
including "UNITS", "UNIT", and "unit".
- Any gsn_csm
script that doesn't have latitude or longitude values on the X axis.
- If the coordinate array that represents the X or Y axis has a
valid "long_name" type attribute, then the value of this attribute
will be used to label the corresponding axis.
- gsn_csm_xy
- Added two new resources called gsnXYBarChartColors2 and gsnXYBarChartPatterns2. They behave similarly to
gsnXYBarChartColors and gsnXYBarChartPatterns, except they assign colors
and patterns of individual bars regardless of whether the bar is up or
down. For an example, see examples 6 and 7 in the bar application examples.
- sprintf
- This function has been updated to allow double input.
- Updates to GRIB reader
- The GRIB reader in NCL has been updated to add support for NCEP
GRIB tables 129, 130 and 131.
Important bug fixes
- equiv_sample_size
- Fixed a bug for the case where an entire input series was
missing. This routine will return a missing value if any input series
are all missing.
- ezfftf, specx_anal
- Fixed a bug that would cause a core dump on some systems if the
input array had an odd number of elements.
- GRIB reader bug fix
- The GRIB reader was not recognizing all bits set in the lat/lon
increment octets of the GDS as meaning "undefined", and thus Dj and Di
were being calculated incorrectly. In this situation, Dj and Di were
fixed to be calculated from the number of lats/lons and the
endpoints.
- idsfft
- Fixed a serious bug that would cause incorrect output if your
input array was non-square.
- ut_inv_calendar
- Fixed a bug that would cause this routine to core dump if invoked
multiple times with the same specification string.
- write_matrix
- Data was being printed in column x row format instead of
row x column format as advertised.
Version 4.2.0.a030
1 July 2003
This version was released shortly after the previous version to fix
some bugs that were found in the dashline and stippling code. Also,
some people were running into problems with cyclic data. If you have
problems with this version, please send email to Mary Haley.
Version 4.2.0.a029
1 July 2003
New documentation
- NCL mini reference manual
- There's a new mini NCL reference manual that you can print out,
courtesy of Dennis Shea and Sylvia Murphy of the Climate and Global
Dynamics Division at NCAR. It contains information on language
syntax, file I/O, attributes and coordinate variables, data
processing, and how to access external codes. It's available in PDF
format from the manuals
page.
New and updated functionality
- New way to create a double precision variable
- You can now specify doubles on the fly without having to use the
new function. The format is similar to Fortran, in
which you use a 'D' or 'd' specification. The following are
equivalent, and produce a NCL variable of type "double":
d = 1d
d = 1D
d = 1D0
d = 1d+0
d = 1d-0
- escovc
- Calculates cross-covariance between two variables.
- filwgts_normal
- Calculates 1D filter weights based on the gaussian (normal)
distribution.
- fspan
- This function has been updated to allow numeric input.
- getfiledimsizes
- Returns a list of dimension sizes of the given file variable.
- getfilevardimsizes
- Returns an array of integer dimension sizes for file
variables. This function already existed as "filevardimsizes", but to
stay consistent with the naming convention of other file retrieval
functions (they all start with the word "get"), we decided to give it
a new name. The old name will still work forever for backwards
compatibility.
- Any gsn_csm
plotting script that recognizes the gsn*String
resources.
- The font height of the three subtitles at the top can now be set
individually using the resources gsnLeftStringFontHeightF, gsnCenterStringFontHeightF, and gsnRightStringFontHeightF. You can also set all
three font heights with the single resource gsnStringFontHeightF. The
subtitle font heights can also still be set with txFontHeightF, but setting this resource may
affect your lat/lon label sizes in a polar plot.
- Any gsn_csm
polar plotting script.
- The font and font height of the latitude/longitude labels on a
polar stereographic plot can now be controlled via the resources
gsnPolarLabelFont and gsnPolarLabelFontHeightF.
- isfilepresent
- Checks for the existence of a file.
- isunlimited
- Checks if a named dimension in the file is defined as an unlimited
dimension.
- NhlNewDashPattern
- Adds new dash patterns to the existing table of dash
patterns. For an example click on the script dashlines.ncl, or see its output.
- NhlNewMarker
- Adds new markers to the existing table of
markers. For an example, click on the script markers.ncl, or see its output.
- Stipple dot size control
- You can now control the size of stipple dots (pattern 17 in the
fill pattern
table) using the new resources cnFillDotSizeF, gsFillDotSizeF, lbFillDotSizeF, and mpFillDotSizeF.
For an example, click on the script stipple.ncl, or see its output
(frame 1, frame 2, and frame 3).
- ut_calendar, ut_inv_calendar
- Converts from time values with specific units to UTC-referenced
dates, and vice versa. These fuctions use routines in the Udunits
library to do the conversions.
Important bug fixes
- Fix for cases where you have constant X or Y data
in an XY plot.
- Previously, if you had an XY plot in which the data was constant
in X or Y, you would get a warning message:
warning:TransInitialize: Zero Y coordinate span: defaulting:[errno=1104]
and the axis representing the constant data would default to a minimum
of 0 and a maximum of 1. This has been fixed so that the minimum and
maximum are calculated based on the value of the constant data.
- Changes to GRIB reader
- The GRIB reader in NCL has been updated using the currently
documented values at:
http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/docs/on388/
with the exception that model index 84 was changed from "MESO ETA
Model (currently 12 km)" to simply "MESO ETA Model", because we
believe the same index has been used historically for a number of
different model resolutions. Model indexes 83 and 85 are changed from
"No longer used" to what they were previously: "ETA Model - 80 km
version" and "ETA Model - 30 km version", on the assumption that any
GRIB file with these model indexes would be an old one.
- line thickness in PostScript files
- With the addition of the PDF driver, the line thickness for the
various output devices (NCGM, X11 window, PS, and PDF) were adjusted
to try to get them all to look the same. This resulted in line
thicknesses for PS files being noticeably thicker, so they were
reduced back to what they looked like before version 4.2.0.a028.
- markers
- With the addition of the NhlNewMarker
routine, the current existing markers in NCL have been adjusted to be
more centered with respect to its position coordinates. These
differences will probably not be noticeable for standard marker
programs. However, if you are significantly increasing the size of
your markers, you may notice a slight shift in the X and/or Y
direction.
Version 4.2.0.a028
31 March 2003
- Changes and new
capabilities in GRIB reader
- Some major additions have been added to NCL's GRIB file reader to
make it much more robust and to fix some bugs.
For more information, please see the "supported data formats
information" section in the NCL Reference Manual.
The ability to load GRIB parameters from a file has been added.
This can be done by setting the environment variable
NCL_GRIB_PTABLE_PATH to a file or directory path. Parameter tables
read from a file have precedence over built-in tables that would
otherwise apply to the same dataset. An interface for adjusting this
precedence at run-time is on the enhancement request list.
Many new built-in parameter tables were added, including all tables
supported by wgrib,
three FSL tables, and a Navy Fleet Numerical Meteorology and
Oceanography Center table.
Support was added for thinned "quasi-regular" grids.
The way NCL names certain GRIB variables has been changed. This may
result in variable names that are incompatible with previous names. In
particular, variables involving average, accumulation, and difference
over specific periods of time. For example, the variable
PRATE_GDS4_SFC_ave will now be PRATE_GDS4_SFC_ave6h. This was
required because some GRIB files have averages for several differing
periods on the same file.
A problem was fixed for parameters less than 128 in ECMWF files.
- Sending output to a PDF file
- A PDF driver was added to NCL, allowing you to direct your
graphical output directly to PDF. To use this driver with the GSN*
suite of scripts, simply change the first argument of your call to
gsn_open_wks to "pdf". A file with
the name "file.pdf" will be created, where file is the
second argument to gsn_open_wks.
Otherwise, you can create a PDFWorkstation much
like you do a PSWorkstation.
- You can now write true scalars to an
HDF or netCDF file
- Previously, if you wrote an NCL scalar to an HDF or netCDF file and
then did a dump on the file, you would see that the scalar was written
out as a 1D array of length one, rather than as a true
scalar. For example:
netcdf test {
dimensions:
ncl_scalar = 1 ;
variables:
int c(ncl_scalar) ;
data:
c = 5 ;
}
Now, you can write scalars to an HDF or netCDF file using one of two
methods:
- Use the filevardef procedure:
f = addfile("test.nc","c")
filevardef(f,"c","integer","ncl_scalar")
c = 5
f->c = c
- Create a scalar variable in NCL, assign it the dimension name
"ncl_scalar", and then assign this variable to the file:
f = addfile("test.nc","c")
c = 5
c!0 = "ncl_scalar"
f->c = c
Using one of the above methods results in a file as follows:
netcdf test {
variables:
int c ;
data:
c = 5 ;
}
- Use a more efficient method to avoid the double copying of
attributes to a file:
c = 5.123
c@long_name = "sample constant"
c@units = "m"
f = addfile("test.nc","c")
filevardef(f,"c", typeof(c), "ncl_scalar")
filevarattdef(f,"c", c)
f->c = (/ c /) ; Use '(/' and '/)' to avoid
; copying of attributes.
Using the above method results in a file as follows:
netcdf test {
variables:
float c ;
c:units = "m" ;
c:long_name = "sample constant" ;
}
You are no longer allowed to define the dimension "ncl_scalar" using
filedimdef. If you do, a warning level message is
returned:
FileAddDim:"ncl_scalar" is a reserved file dimension name in NCL;
it cannot be defined by the user
Note that there is no restriction on using the name "ncl_scalar" as a
dimension name for ordinary variables: only for defining it as a file
dimension.
- Performance
enhancement for array variable initialization and assignment
- Whenever the new function is invoked, it fills
the variable with missing values. This method has been improved to
double the number of initializations taking place for each
iteration.
Where possible, contiguous data are now copied used single invocations
of memcpy, thus speeding up the intialization of various kinds of
array assignments, including:
- unsubscripted assignment where the types differ
- unsubscripted = subscripted: t = u(1,:,:)
- subscripted = unsubscripted: t(1,:,:) = u
- subscripted = subscripted: t(1,:,:) = u(0,0:9,:)
- subscripted = scalar: t(1,:,:) = 10.0
The optimization is only possible when certain conditions are met:
- the stride is positive
- the dimension is not reversed
- the dimension is not reordered
- the dimension does not employ vector subsetting
New and updated functions
- dspnt2s, dspnt2d,
dspnt3s, dspnt3d.
- These routines were updated to allow multiple dimensions.
- gammainc
- Evaluates the incomplete gamma function; often used to determine
probabilities
- getfilevartypes
- Returns the types of the named variables in a given file.
- Any gsn_csm
script that recognizes the gsnAddCyclic
resource.
- The gsn_csm
plotting scripts have been updated such that if 2D latitude/longitude
coordinate variables are present (that is, the data has the special
"lat2d" and "lon2d" attributes set to 2D arrays), then gsnAddCyclic will default to False.
This means that any NCL scripts that are setting the lat2d/lon2d
attributes and expecting the cyclic point to be added, you will need
to add a line setting gsnAddCyclic to
True:
res@gsnAddCyclic = True
- gsn_csm_vector_map_ce and
gsn_csm_vector_scalar_map_ce
- These two plotting functions were modified so that if both a
labelbar and a vector reference annotation are drawn, and you move the
reference annotation up, then the labelbar will not get moved up into
the tickmarks. If you were previously getting around this problem by
setting the pmLabelBarOrthogonalPosF resource to
readjust the position of the labelbar, then you may want to consider
removing the setting of this resource altogether.
- gsn_panel
- Updated to add a new resource called gsnPanelFigureStringsFontHeightF. Use this
resource to control the font height of the panel figure strings that
you specify with the gsnPanelFigureStrings
resource.
- isdimnamed
- Checks whether one or more of a variable's dimensions are named.
- new
- This function, which allocates space for a specified data type, has
been improved by speeding up the initialization that takes place when you
invoke it. In some of our timing tests on large allocations of data, we saw
speed-ups of 2.5 times and greater.
- triple2grid
- Places randomly-spaced data onto the nearest locations of a grid
with two-dimensional latitude and longitude arrays.
- uv2vr_cfd
- A term that accounts for the convergence of the meridions has been
added to this routine. The effects should be small except possibly
near the poles.
- wgt_areaave2
- Calculates the area average of a quantity using 2D weights.
- wgt_areasum2
- Calculates the area sum of a quantity using 2D weights.
- wgt_arearmse2
- Calculates the area root-mean-square-difference between two variables
using 2D weights.
- write_matrix
- Prints nicely-formatted 2D arrays.
Important bug fixes
- fbinrecwrite
- This procedure was fixed so that it doesn't core dump if you try
to write characters to a file. This bug is related to the
typeof bug mentioned next.
- typeof
- This function now correctly returns the string "character" when
you call it with a variable that is of type character. It was
previously just returning "char". Make sure you fix any scripts
that are calling this function and checking for "char".
Version 4.2.0.a027
30 December 2002
New and updated functions, and bug fixes
- memory bug fix
- A couple of memory bugs were fixed in NCL. One bug
caused some large NCL scripts to core dump or to say a variable wasn't
defined when it very clearly was. This bug was particularly
noticeable if you had lots of do loops, or were creating lots of
variables in your main program. The second bug occurred when NCL
scripts erroneously referenced undefined variable attributes, and then
tried to delete them.
- filling high-resolution maps (bug fix)
- A bug was fixed in which if you drew a low resolution
map and filled the continents, and then drew a high resolution map and
filled the continents, you would get some blocky holes in the filled
areas.
- Streamline bug
- A streamline bug that was similar to the vector bug
mentioned below was fixed. This bug caused coordinate arrays to be
ignored when streamline plots were being overlaid on a map plot, and
thus the streamlines were not appearing in the right location.
- Vector bug
- Fixed a vector bug that caused the reference length for
normal line and fill vectors to not be calculated properly if the
reference magnitude resource (vcRefMagnitudeF) was set, and the
reference length resource had its default value of 0.0, thus
indicating that NCL should determine the reference length itself.
- dim_num
- Counts the number of True values of the n-1 rightmost
dimension for all dimensions 0...n-2
- gsn_add_text,
gsn_text,
gsn_text_ndc
- These routines have been updated to allow arrays of text strings
to be drawn. To see some examples, go to the application text examples.
- gsn_csm_vector_scalar_map,
gsn_csm_vector_scalar_map_ce, and
gsn_csm_vector_scalar_map_polar
- These routines have been updated to use the scalar field's long_name
and units attributes to label the top left and right of the plot, rather
than the U/V field attributes.
- histograms
- New functionality has been added to gsn_histogram to allow you to specify ranges
and discrete values together in one histogram. New histogram resources
have been added to allow you to bin values that are outside the given
range of class values (gsnHistogramMinMaxBinsOn), to make the histograms
horizontal (gsnHistogramHorizontal), and
to control how missing values are handled (gsnHistogramComputePercentagesNoMissing).
For
an example, click on the script histogram.ncl, or see its output
(frame 1, frame 2, frame 3, frame 4, and frame 5).
- round
- Rounds a float or double variable to the nearest whole number.
- svd_lapack
- Computes singular value decomposition (SVD) of a general
rectangular matrix. Returned are the singular values and the left and
right singular vectors.
Version 4.2.0.a026
24 September 2002
A vector bug was discovered in version 4.2.0.a025 that's serious
enough to warrant releasing a bug fix right away (hence this
version). This bug caused coordinate arrays to be ignored when vector
plots were being overlaid on a map plot, and thus the vectors were not
appearing in the right location.
Version 4.2.0.a025
16 September 2002
New capabilities in NCL
- New capabilities with spherical 2D grids and
discrete rasterization capability
- NCL can now handle 2D spherical grids; that is, grids that are
represented by 2D coordinate arrays. This new capability can be used
with both contour and vector plots. For an example, click on the
script pop.ncl, or see its
output (frame 1, frame 2, frame 3, frame 4, frame 5).
The above example also showcases the new discrete rasterization
capability. If the lat/lon coordinate arrays have one more element
along both dimensions than the data array, then in raster mode, this
will cause the raster fill to treat the coordinate arrays as cell
boundaries.
You can see some more examples in the pop applications page.
- ictrans and med bugs
- A bug was fixed in both ictrans and med that caused metafiles to
not be appended properly on LINUX systems. The problem would surface
when you tried to write multiple frames from one metafile to another
metafile.
- Running NCL scripts
- You can now run an NCL script without using the "<" character:
ncl xy.ncl
or:
ncl < xy.ncl
New and updated functions
- bar chart
capability
- You can now use multiple colors to fill the bars in a bar chart.
See example 7 in the bar
applications page.
- ftcurv, ftcurvd,
ftcurvi, ftcurvp,
ftcurvpi, ftcurvps,
ftcurvs, ftsurf
- Updated to allow the input to be of type numeric (instead
of just float), and to allow xi to be multi-dimensional.
- ftkurv, ftkurvd,
ftkurvp, ftkurvpd
- Updated to allow the input to be of type numeric (instead
of just float), and the output to be float or
double.
- getvardims
- Returns a list of dimension names of the given variable.
- gsn_draw_named_colors
- Takes a list of named colors, and draws them in a grid with the
color name and corresponding RGB triplet listed. For an example,
click on the script gsn_draw_named_colors.ncl,
or see its output.
- gsn_reverse_colormap
- Reverses the current color map keeping the foreground and
background colors the same. You must have this version of NCL and load
gsn_code.ncl in order to have access to this function. For an example,
click on the script gsn_reverse_colormap.ncl,
or see its original color
map and then the reversed color
map.
- histograms
- If you enter non-equally spaced values for the gsnHistogramClassIntervals or gsnHistogramBinIntervals resource, then gsn_histogram will now make them equally
spaced on the axis.
See example 5 in the histogram application pages.
- linint1, linint2,
linint2_points
- Updated to allow input arrays to be multi-dimensional.
- nggetp, ngsetp
- Sets and retrieves parameters for the
nglogo, ngezlogo routines.
Version 4.2.0.a024
13 May 2002
New and updated functions
- cdfbin_p, cdfbin_s,
cdfbin_xn, cdfbin_pr
- Calculates various parameters of the binomial distribution.
- cdfchi_p, cdfchi_x
- Calculates various parameters of the chi-square distribution.
- cdfgam_p, cdfgam_x
- Calculates various parameters of the gamma distribution.
- cdfnor_p, cdfnor_x
- Calculates various parameters of the normal distribution.
- dtrend_quadratic
- Estimates and removes the least squares quadratic trend at all
grid points.
- gsn_attach_plots
- Updated so that you can now set the gsnMaximize resource to maximize the size of the
attached plots.
- MacOSX version of NCL available.
- You can download the MacOSX NCL binaries by going to the download section and following
instructions.
- ngezlogo
- Draws the NCAR logo in the lower right corner of the workstation.
For an example, click on the script nglogo.ncl, or see its NCGM or PostScript output.
- nglogo
- Draws various NCAR and UCAR logos. For an example, click on the
script nglogo.ncl, or see
its NCGM or PostScript output.
- sigma2hybrid
- Interpolates a vertical column from sigma coordinates to hybrid
coordinates.
Version 4.2.0.a023
14 February 2002
labelbars and legends bug
Fixed a change in the way labelbars and legends were drawn that
would cause some of the labels to disappear.
Automatic generation of map tickmarks (lat/lon labels)
You can have lat/lon labels automatically generated for several
map projections. This feature has not been incorporated into the
gsn_csm
functions yet.
To generate map tickmarks automatically (if you are not using gsn_csm
functions), set the pmTickMarkDisplayMode resource to
"Always" when you are setting the map resources.
For an example, click on the script maptm.ncl, or see its output.
Access to RANGS/GSHHS high-resolution map database
You can access the multi-resolution coastline database RANGS
(Regionally Accessible Nested Global Shorelines), developed by Rainer
Feistel from Wessel and Smith's GSHHS (Global Self-consistent
Hierarchical High-resolution Shoreline) database.
For information on how to download and install the RANGS/GSHHS,
please click here.
Once you have the database installed, you can see an example by
clicking on the script coast_2.ncl, or
viewing its
output.
New and updated functions
- dewtemp_trh
- Calculates the dew point temperature given temperature and
relative humidity.
- gsn_attach_plots
- Starting with a base plot, this function attaches a series of
plots to the right Y axis (or bottom X axis) of the previous plot.
You must have at least this version of NCL and load gsn_code.ncl to
have access to this function. For an example, see the script gsn_attach_plots.ncl
and its
output.
- gsn_csm_y
- This function is similar to gsn_csm_xy, except that only the Y values are
passed in, and the X values will be index values going from 0 to
npts-1, where npts is the number of points in the Y
curve(s). You must load gsn_code.ncl and gsn_csm.ncl to have access
to this function.
- gsn_legend_ndc
- This function draws a legend anywhere in the viewport. You must
load gsn_code.ncl to have access to this function.
- gsn_y
- This function is similar to gsn_xy, except that only the Y values are
passed in, and the X values will be index values going from 0 to
npts-1, where npts is the number of points in the Y
curve(s). You must load gsn_code.ncl to have access to this function.
For an example, see the script gsn_y.ncl and its output.
- ind_resolve
- Takes a list of indices returned by ind and
resolves them to their multi-dimensional representation.
- lclvl
- Calculates the pressure of the lifting condensation level.
- mixhum_ptrh
- Calculates the mixing ratio or specific humidity given pressure,
temperature and relative humidity.
- rcm2points
- Interpolates from a grid produced by the Regional Climate Model
(where grid points are represented by 2D lat/lon arrays),
to user-specified locations.
- wmstnm
- This procedure uses the low-level WMSTNM routine from the Wmap package to plot station
model data.
- dv2uvF, dv2uvG
uv2sfvpF, uv2sfvpG
uv2vrdvF, uv2vrdvG
vr2uvF, vr2uvG,
vrdv2uvF, vrdv2uvG
- These are functional versions of the existing procedures:
dv2uvf, dv2uvg,
uv2sfvpf, uv2sfvpg,
uv2vrdvf, uv2vrdvg,
vr2uvf, vr2uvg,
vrdv2uvf, vrdv2uvg
Version 4.2.0.a022
28 November 2001
- pres_hybrid_ccm,
dpres_hybrid_ccm
- Fixed a bug that caused these functions not to work if ps
was more than 2 dimensions.
- conform
- Updated to allow a multi-dimensional array to conform to the shape
of another multi-dimensional array
- Curly vectors
- A resource was updated to allow the specification of curly
vectors. This functionality has actually been in NCL since version
4.2.0.a019, but I forgot to mention it then. For more information,
see the vcGlyphStyle resource or
see example 2 in the vector
application pages.
- ezfftb, ezfftf
- Updated to check for missing values.
- filwgts_lancos
- Updated to allow nsigma to be numeric.
linint1
| Updated to allow the input or output X coordinates to be
increasing OR decreasing.
- linint2
- Updated to allow the input or output X/Y coordinates to be
increasing OR decreasing.
- random_chi
- Generates random values of chi-square variable.
- random_gamma
- Generates random deviates from a gamma distribution.
- random_normal
- Generates random deviates from a normal distribution.
- random_setallseed
- Sets the seed for the family of random functions.
- random_uniform
- Generates uniform random values between two given low and high
values.
- rcm2rgrid
- Interpolates from a grid produced by the Regional Climate Model,
where grid points are represented by 2D lat/lon arrays,
to a regular grid.
- rgrid2rcm
- Interpolates from a regular grid to a grid produced by the
Regional Climate Model, where grid points are represented by
2D lat/lon arrays.
Version 4.2.0.a021
24 September 2001
- g2gshv, f2gshv,
g2fshv, f2fshv
- An error in the spherical harmonic based functions for regridding
vector quantities was fixed: the spherical harmonic coefficients after
vector analysis (optionally, truncation) were inadvertently
synthesized in scalar mode rather than vector mode.
- csa1, csa1d
[csa1x, csa1xd]
- Calculates an approximating cubic spline for 1D input data [and
weights the input data if desired]. These are the generic and double
precision versions of csa1s
[csa1xs].
- csa2, csa2d
[csa2x, csa2xd]
- Calculates an approximating cubic spline for 2D input data [and
weights the input data if desired]. These are the generic and double
precision versions of csa2s
[csa2xs].
- csa2l, csa2ld
[csa2lx, csa2lxd]
- Calculates an approximating cubic spline for 2D input data at a
list of specified coordinates [and weights the input data if
desired]. These are the generic and double precision versions of
csa2ls [csa2lxs].
- csa3, csa3d
[csa3x, csa3xd]
- Calculates an approximating cubic spline for 3D input data [and
weights the input data if desired]. These are the generic and double
precision versions of csa3s
[csa3xs].
- csa3l, csa3ld
[csa3lx, csa3lxd]
- Calculates an approximating cubic spline for 3D input data at a
list of specified coordinates [and weights the input data if
desired]. These are the generic and double precision versions of
csa3ls [csa3lxs].
- dspnt2, dspnt3
- Interpolates 2D/3D data at specified points. These are the generic
versions of
dspnt2s, dspnt2d, dspnt3s, dspnt3d.
- exp_tapersh_wgts
- Calculates weights which are used to perform tapering (filtering)
on the spherical harmonic coefficients.
- exp_tapersh, exp_tapershC
- Performs tapering (filtering) on the spherical harmonic
coefficients.
- gsn_csm_pres_hgt_streamline
- Draws a pressure/height plot with streamlines and contours. You
must have at least this version of NCL and load both gsn_code.ncl and
gsn_csm.ncl in order to have access to this function.
- gsn_csm_pres_hgt_vector
- Draws a pressure/height plot with vectors and contours. You must
have at least this version of NCL and load both gsn_code.ncl and
gsn_csm.ncl in order to have access to this function.
- nnpnt
- Interpolates at a list of given points. This routine is the
generic version of nnpnts, nnpntd.
- nnpntinit
- Calculates all natural neighbor relationships in an input data
array. This is the generic version of
nnpntinits, nnpntinitd.
- nnpnts, nnpntd
- Updated to allow an array of any length.
- specxy_anal
- Updated to add an attribute called coher_probability.
Version 4.2.0.a020
24 July 2001
- dim_rmsd
- Computes the root-mean-square-difference of the n-1 rightmost
dimension for all dimensions 0...n-2
- ezfftb
- Updated to allow xbar to be a scalar
- get_sphere_radius,
set_sphere_radius
- Retrieves or sets the radius of a sphere (to be used in
conjunction with the spherical harmonic
routines).
- gsn_csm_xy
- Added three new resource called gsnXYBarChart, gsnXYBarChartBarWidth, and gsnXYBarChartOutlineOnly. If you set gsnXYBarChart to True and gsnYRefLine to a reference value, then you will
get a bar going up or down for each Y value (depending on whether it
is greater or less than the reference value), instead of a smooth Y
curve. The default width of each bar is the smallest distance between
consecutive X values. You can change the width with the gsnXYBarChartBarWidth resource. If you set
gsnXYBarChartOutlineOnly to True, then
you will only get the outline of the bars.
Click on bar.ncl to see a
script example, and bar1.gif/bar2.gif to see example graphics.
- gsnSpreadColorStart
gsnSpreadColorEnd
- These special attributes were updated to allow you to reverse the
order of the color indices spanned. Click on spread_colors_rev.ncl
to see a script example, and spread_colors_rev.gif
to see an example graphic.
- tm04n
- Added a long-lost TickMark example (it uses object-oriented code).
- polar stereographic plots bug
- Fixed an elusive bug in the drawing of polar stereographic plots
that would sometimes cause the error messages:
fatal:ContourPlotDraw: ARSCAM/ARPRAM - ALGORITHM FAILURE
fatal:ContourPlotDraw: draw error
fatal:ContourPlotDraw: draw error
fatal:PlotManagerDraw: error in plot draw
fatal:_NhlPlotManagerDraw: Draw error
to appear, and the plot wouldn't get drawn.
- fbindirread
- Fixed a problem that only occurred when the file being read was an
exact multiple of the blocksize.
- specx_anal, specxy_anal
- Fixed a bug in the way the attributes frq, spcx,
spcy, coher, quspc, cospc, and
phase are returned from these functions.
- NCL arrays
- Fixed a bug that would limit the number of elements that could be used
in a single dimension of an array. The cut-off was around 2^23
elements.
Version 4.2.0.a019
12 June 2001
Functions/procedures added or updated
- center_finite_diff
- Updated to allow r to be multi-dimensional
- grid2triple
- Converts a 2D grid with 1D coordinate
variables to a 3D array where each grid value is
associated with its coordinates
- gsn_csm_xy
- Updated so that if the X or Y data has units of "degrees_east" or
"degrees_north", then the corresponding axis will be labeled with
"nice" latitude and/or longitude labels.
- wavelet
- Computes the wavelet transform of a time series, and significance
levels.
- Labelbar display
- A bug was fixed that caused the labelbar to sometimes not display
the correct levels if "cnLevels" was set explicitly.
Version 4.2.0.a018
14 May 2001
Functions/procedures added or updated
- int2p
- Updated so input pressure arrays can be 1D or multi-dimensional
- inverse_matrix
- Computes the inverse of a general matrix using the LU
factorization
- paleo_outline
- Creates coastal outlines from model orography data for use in
paleogeographic plots
- pres_sigma
- Calculates the pressure at specified sigma levels
- solve_linsys
- Computes the solution to a real system of linear equations
- taper
- Applies split-cosine-bell tapering to one or more series
Version 4.2.0.a017
2 April 2001
Functions/procedures added or updated
- gsn_histogram
- Draws a histogram plot. You must load gsn_code.ncl in order to
have access to this function.
- zonal_mpsi
- Computes a zonal mean meridional stream function using a modified
definition of the CCM Processor zonal mean meridional stream
function.
Version 4.2.0.a016
16 March 2001
Functions/procedures added or updated
- dsgrid2, dsgrid3
- Interpolates 2D/3D random data to a rectangular grid using simple
inverse distance weighted interpolation. These are generic versions of
dsgrid2s/dsgrid2d/dsgrid3s/dsgrid3d.
- filwgts_lancos
- Calculates 1D filter weights
- esccr
- A bug was fixed that only occurred when either series had one or
more missing values *and* lagged cross-correlations were
calculated. The error is believed to have been introduced in April
2000.
Specifically:
- if no missing values were present (eg: model output) then all
cross-correlations are correct.
- cross-correlations between series at lag zero are correct even if
missing values were present. (ie, the straight cross-correlation
coefficient is correct.)
- the results are incorrect when missing values are present, and
cross-correlations at lags greater than zero were computed.
- gsn_draw_colormap
- Draws the current color map (useful for debugging purposes). You
must have this version of NCL and load gsn_code.ncl in order to have
access to this function.
- gsn_merge_colormaps
- Merges two color maps into one color map. You must have at least
this version of NCL and load gsn_code.ncl in order to have access to
this function.
- int2p
- Updated so that the input pressure levels can be in either
decreasing or increasing order
- natgrid
- Interpolates 2D random data to a rectangular grid using natural
neighbor interpolation. This is a generic version of natgrids/natgridd.
- nngetwts, nngetwtsd
- Retrieves natural neighbors and weights for the function values at
those neighbors
Version 4.2.0.a015
14 February 2001
Functions/procedures added or updated
- conform
- Expands a 1D array so that it conforms to the shape
of another variable
- dim_min, dim_max
- A bug was fixed that caused these functions to fail if the input
didn't contain a missing value attribute (_FillValue).
-
dv2uvf, dv2uvg,
gradsf, gradsg,
igradsf, igradsg,
igradsF, igradsG,
ilapsf, ilapsg,
ilapsF, ilapsG,
ilapvf, ilapvg,
lapsf, lapsg,
lapvf, lapvg,
lderuvf, lderuvg,
uv2dvf, uv2dvg,
uv2dvF, uv2dvG,
uv2sfvpf, uv2sfvpg,
uv2vrdvf, uv2vrdvf,
uv2vrf, uv2vrg,
uv2vrF, uv2vrG,
vr2uvf, vr2uvg,
vrdv2uvf, vrdv2uvg
- Updated so that each 2D lat/lon array that comes in is
individually checked for missing values. If missing values are found,
then interpolation is skipped only for that lat/lon subsection.
- gsn_csm_streamline_contour_map_ce
- Draws streamlines and contours over a cylindrical equidistant map
projection. You must have at least this version of NCL and load both
gsn_code.ncl and gsn_csm.ncl in order to have access to this function.
- gsn_csm_streamline_contour_map_polar
- Draws streamlines and contours over a polar stereographic map
projection. You must have at least this version of NCL and load both
gsn_code.ncl and gsn_csm.ncl in order to have access to this function.
- gsn_csm_streamline_map_polar
- Draws
streamlines over a polar stereographic map projection. You must have
at least this version of NCL and load both gsn_code.ncl and
gsn_csm.ncl in order to have access to this function.
- vinth2p_ecmwf
- Updated so that the phis array can be 2D or 3D
- New colormaps
- Two more pre-defined color maps were added in this version,
rainbow+gray
and rainbow+white+gray. Click
on the color
table gallery to see a table of all the available color
maps.
Version 4.2.0.a014
2 January 2001
Functions/procedures added or updated
- dim_gbits
- Unpacks bit chunks from the rightmost dimension of the input array
- gaus_lobat
- Computes gaussian latitudes and weights using Gauss-Lobatto quadrature
- gaus_lobat_wgt
- Computes Gauss-Lobatto weights given a 1D array of
Gauss-Lobatto latitudes
- getbitsone
- Unpacks one-bit chunks from the input array
- linrood_latwgt
- Computes the latitudes and weights used by the Lin-Rood Model
- linrood_wgt
- Computes the weights used by the Lin-Rood Model
- Ngmath routines
- Updated many of the Ngmath interpolation routines to accept
multi-dimensional input (csa1s,
csa1xs, csa2ls,
csa2lxs, csa2s,
csa2xs, csa3ls,
csa3lxs, csa3s,
csa3xs, dsgrid2s,
dsgrid2d, dsgrid3s,
dsgrid3d, ftcurv,
ftcurvd, ftcurvi,
ftcurvp, ftcurvpi,
ftcurvps, ftcurvs,
natgrids, natgridd)
- prcwater_dp
- Computes column precipitable water
- vibeta
- The input pressure levels may now be a multi-dimensional array
Version 4.2.0.a013
8 November 2000
Functions/procedures added or updated
- addfiles
- Updated to have a default list type of "cat" rather than "join"
- pop_remap
- Performs a first order remap from one grid to another using
weights, source addresses and destination addresses from the Spherical
Coordinate Remapping and Interpolation Package
Version 4.2.0.a012
30 October 2000
Functions/procedures added or updated
- addfiles
- References multiple data files in supported formats (".nc",".hdf",
".grb",".ccm") and provides the user with the ability to access data
spanning multiple files
- dim_pqsort
- Returns one or more permutation vector(s) generated by sorting the
n-1 (rightmost) dimension
- fourier_info
- Performs fourier analysis on one or more periodic series and
returns the amplitude, phase and percent variance explained for each
harmonic
- gsn_add_polygon
gsn_add_polyline
gsn_add_polymarker
- These functions were updated to allow missing values. For gsn_add_polygon and gsn_add_polymarker, missing values are first
removed, and then the resulting markers/polygon are/is drawn. For
gsn_add_polyline, only the
non-missing parts of the line are drawn.
- gsn_add_text
- Attaches text to a given plot. Using this function allows you to
panel text strings (as you weren't able to do with gsn_text). For a simple example, see the
script gsn_add_text.ncl and
its
output.
- gsn_panel
- Updated to add a new resource called gsnPanelRowSpec, whose default is False. If you
set this resource to True, then instead of specifying the number of
rows x columns you want for your paneled plots, you specify the number
of plots per row. For an example, see example 11 in the panel plots applications
pages.
- ListGetType
- Specifies the manner in which a variable of type "list" is to be
used (use in conjunction with addfiles)
- ListSetType
- Specifies the manner in which a variable of type "list" is to be
used (use in conjunction with addfiles)
- nice_mnmxintvl
- Calculates "nice" values for endpoints and spacing to be used for
creating a series of equally-spaced levels through the data domain
- sprinti
- Converts an array of integers into an array of formatted strings
- uv2dv_cfd
- Computes divergence for a latitude-longitude grid using centered
finite differences (missing values allowed)
- uv2vr_cfd
- Computes relative vorticity for a latitude-longitude grid using centered
finite differences (missing values allowed)
Version 4.2.0.a011
28 August 2000
Email list
We created an email list called "ncl-talk" for NCL users to exchange
ideas and information. To learn more about this email list, see the
archived messages, or to subscribe, go to email lists.
Functions/procedures added or updated
- addfile
- If a variable from a CCM file that was read in with
addfile doesn't have a "long_name" attribute
associated with it, then "long_name" will be set to the name of the
variable.
- angmom_atm
- Calculates the atmosphere's relative angular momentum
- betainc
- Evaluates the incomplete beta function; often used to determine
probabilities
- chiinv
- Evaluates the inverse chi-squared distribution function
- dpres_hybrid_ccm
- Calculates the pressure differences at the given hybrid levels
- equiv_sample_size
- Estimates the "equivalent sample size" of a series of observations
which may have significant positive autocorrelation
- ftest
- Applies F-test for variances and returns an estimate of the
statistical significance
- pres_hybrid_ccm
- Calculates the pressure [Pa] at the given hybrid levels
- rtest
- Determines the statistical significance of a linear correlation
coefficient
- ttest
- Student's t-test for difference between means; returns an estimate
of the statistical significance and, optionally, the
t-values.
- wgt_arearmse
- Calculates a weighted area average root-mean-square difference
(rmse) between two variables
- wgt_volave_ccm
- Calculates the volume average of a quantity from the CCM using
weights
- wgt_volrmse
- Calculates a weighted volume average root-mean-square difference
(rmse) between two variables
Climate divisions were added to the map database. To see an NCL
example that draws all of the climate divisions in the United States,
see the script climate.ncl and its output
(frame 1 and frame 2).
Version 4.2.0.a010
31 July 2000
Functions/procedures added or updated
- center_finite_diff
- Performs a centered finite difference operation
- dim_stat4
- Calculates the first four moments (average, variance, skewness, and
kurtosis) for dimension n-1 at all other indexes
- gc_latlon
- Calculates the great circle distance between two points on the
surface of the globe. It also returns a user specified number of
lat/lon coordinate pairs along the great circle path
- gsn_add_polygon
- Attaches a polygon to a given plot. Using this function allows you
to panel polygons (as you weren't able to do with gsn_polygon). You must have at least this
version of NCL and load gsn_code.ncl in order to have access to this
function.
- gsn_add_polyline
- Attaches a polyline to a given plot. Using this function allows
you to panel polylines (as you weren't able to do with gsn_polyline). You must have at least this
version of NCL and load gsn_code.ncl in order to have access to this
function.
- gsn_add_polymarker
- Attaches polymarkers to a given plot. Using this function allows
you to panel polymarkers (as you weren't able to do with gsn_polymarker). You must have at least this
version of NCL and load gsn_code.ncl in order to have access to this
function.
- linint2_points
- Interpolates from a grid to arbitrarily specified coordinate pairs
using bilinear interpolation
- vinth2p_ecmwf
- Calculates vertical interpolation (optionally, extrapolation) from
hybrid coordinates to pressure levels (interpolation of temperature
and geopotential below ground)
Version 4.2.0.a009
12 June 2000
Functions/procedures added or updated
- dtrend_msg
- Removes the least squares linear trend and estimates of the linear
trend at all grid points (missing data allowed)
- dtrend
- Removes the least squares linear trend and estimates of the linear
trend at all grid points (missing data not allowed) (updated to return
attribute y_intercept)
- eofcor_pcmsg
- Calculates empirical orthogonal functions via the correlation
matrix
(user can specify percent of non-missing data required)
- eofcov_pcmsg
- Calculates empirical orthogonal functions via the covariance matrix
(user can specify percent of non-missing data required)
- escorc
- Calculates cross-correlation between two variables
- ezfftf, ezfftb
- Calculates Fourier coefficients of a real periodic sequence
(Fourier analysis) and vice versa (updated to allow multiple leftmost
dimensions)
- linint1
- Interpolates from one series to another using piecewise linear
interpolation
- linint2
- Interpolates from one grid to another using bilinear
interpolation
- local_max
- Calculates relative local maxima of a 2D array
- local_min
- Calculates relative local minima of a 2D array
- new
- Updated to allow the type argument to be a string; for
example, that which is returned by the typeof
function:
xnew = new( dimsizes(x), typeof(x) )
- regCoef
- Calculates the linear regression coefficient between two
series
(exact same routine as "regcoef", only you don't need to
allocate
space for output variables)
- vhaeC
- Vector harmonic analyses (fixed grid)
- vhagC
- Vector harmonic analyses (Gaussian grid)
- vhseC
- Vector spherical harmonic syntheses (fixed grid)
- vhsgC
- Vector spherical harmonic syntheses (Gaussian grid)
- wgt_areaave
- Calculates the area average of a quantity using weights
- wgt_volave
- Calculates the volume average of a quantity using weights
- wmdrft
- Draws weather fronts (example)
Version 4.2.0.a008
18 January 2000
- dim_median
- Finds median for dimension n-1 at all other indexes
- dim_rmvmean
- Removes the mean of the n-1 dimension
- dim_rmvmed
- Removes the median of the n-1 dimension
- dim_standardize
- Removes the mean and standardizes all elements of the n-1 dimension
- eof_varimax
- Rotates the component loadings using Kaiser row normalization and
using the varimax criterion
- greg2jul
- Returns the Julian day, given the year, month, day, and hour
Version 4.2.0.a007
6 December 1999
Functions/procedures added or updated
-
ftsurf
- Calculates an interpolatory surface passing through a rectangular
grid of function values, (updated to allow input of greater than 2
dimensions)
- rhomb_trunC, rhomb_trunc
- Function/procedure for performing rhomboidal truncation on spherical
harmonic coefficients
- smth9
- Function for performing nine point local smoothing on a 2D grid
- tri_trunC, tri_trunc
- Function/procedure for performing triangular truncation on spherical
harmonic coefficients
Version 4.2.0.a006
2 November 1999
Functions/procedures added or updated
- day_of_week
- Returns the day of week, given the year, month, and day of month
(Gregorian calendar)
- greg2jul
- Returns the Julian day, given the year, month, day, and hour
- jul2greg
- Returns the Gregorian date, given the Julian day
- linmsg
- Linearly interpolates to fill in missing values
- shaeC
- Spherical harmonic analyses of a scalar (fixed grid) (procedural
version already available)
- shagC
- Spherical harmonic analyses of a scalar (gaussian grid) (procedural
version already available)
- shseC
- Spherical harmonic syntheses of a scalar (fixed grid) (procedural
version already available)
- shsgC
- Spherical harmonic syntheses of a scalar (gaussian grid) (procedural
version already available)
Version 4.2.0.a005
29 September 1999
Functions/procedures added or updated
- shgetnp
- Find nearest points to a given point in 3-space
(part of the Shgrid
package)
- shgetp, shsetp
- Gets/sets values for integer control parameters (part of the
Shgrid package)
- shgrid
- Interpolate 3D random data (part of the Shgrid package)
- GRIB reader update
- The following attributes were added to GRIB file variables:
- parameter_number - the GRIB PDS parameter indicator
- grid_number - the GRIB PDS grid indicator
- level_indicator - the GRIB PDS level indicator
More predefined color maps were added in version 4.2.0.a005. To get a
list of all the available predefined color maps in ncl, type:
print(NhlPalGetDefined)
from the NCL command line. See the color
table gallery for a table of the available color maps.
To load anyone of these color maps, you can use any one of the
following code snippets. The color map "rainbow" is being used in
these examples:
Using GSUN calls:
wks = gsn_open_wks("x11","test")
gsn_define_colormap(wks,"rainbow")
or
type = "x11"
type@wkColorMap = "rainbow"
wks = gsn_open_wks(type,"test")
Using straight NCL code:
wks = create "workstation" xWorkstationClass
"wkColorMap" : "rainbow"
end create
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