Run Plot-Point-Obs to plot the output from PB2NC on the command line using the following command:

Next try rerunning Plot-Point-Obs using the -data_file option to plot the points using a different grid:

Display the first output PostScript file by running the following command:

Each red dot in the plot represents the location of at least one observation value.

Next display the output PostScript file that used a different grid by running the following command:

The plot_point_obs is useful in determining how many observation points actually fall within your verification domain.

The -gc and -msg_typ options may be used to further refine the observations to be plotted.
For example, -gc 11 -msg_typ ADPSFC plots surface observations of temperature (GRIB code 11).

The Plot-Data-Plane utility provides a way to visualize the gridded data fields that MET can read. When running Point-Stat, we verified 2-meter temperature, and we'll now run Plot-Data-Plane to visualize that data with the following command:

Now try running Plot-Data-Plane, plotting the 2-meter temperature from a GRIB2 RTMA file, on the command line using the following command:

When running PCP-Combine, we summed up four 3-hourly accumulation forecast files into a single 12-hour accumulation forecast. Run Plot-Data-Plane to plot the NetCDF output from PCP-Combine on the command line using the following command:

Next, let's visualize the gridded RMSE data generated by the Series-Analysis tool:

Display the output PostScript files we just generated by running the following commands:

Customizing Plots

The Plot-Data-Plane tool is intended to provide a quick-look at your data, not a full-featured plotting interface. However, there are a few options:

• The -color_table option overrides the default color table. Look in $MET_BASE/colortables for other color tables or copy one and create your own.
• The -plot_range option manually sets the plotting range. When color tables specify a range of plotting values as [0, 1], they are automatically rescaled to the min/max values in the dataset. This option manually overrides that min/max plotting scale.
• The -title option adds a title to the plot.
• The background map data is specified by the contents of $MET_BASE/config/ConfigMapData. That configuration file specifies the map data files, line colors, line widths, and line types to be plotted. Changes to that file affect all spatial plots generated by the MET tools, including Plot-Data-Plane.

Re-run the plot from the previous page, but specify the color table, plotting limits and title:

Display the resulting image:

The ConfigConstants file can be found in both the data/config and $MET_BASE/config directories. At runtime, the MET tools read all the static data files from the share directory which was generated by running make install. Define the MET_BASE environment variable to point the MET tools to a different location for these static data files.

Image File Conversion

PostScript images are rather large compared to bitmap image formats, such as PNG and GIF. If available on your system, the ImageMagick convert tool provides quick and easy image file conversions. For example, let's convert a PostScript file to PNG format:

Display the resulting image by opening it in a web browser or by running the ImageMagick display tool:

The behavior of Plot-MODE-Field is controlled by the contents of the configuration file passed to it on the command line. The default Plot-MODE-Field configuration file may be found in the $MET_BASE/config/PlotModeFieldConfig_default file. Prior to modifying the configuration file, users are advised to make a copy of the default:

Open up the $MET_TUTORIAL_DATA/config/PlotModeFieldConfig_tutorial file for editing with the text editor of your choice.

• In the plot_info dictionary, set output_directory = "${MET_TUTORIAL_DATA}/output/plot_mode_field";
  To output the PNG file to the plot_mode_field output directory.

Save and close this file.

The Plot-MODE-Field utility provides a way to visualize the MODE NetCDF output files through a PNG file. Run Plot-MODE-Field to plot the MODE output on the command line using the following command:

Note that mode_240000L_20050808_000000V_120000A_obj.nc was generated earlier in the tutorial by MODE.

In this example, Plot-MODE-Field visualizes simple objects from an observed precipitation field using parameters from the configuration file PlotModeFieldConfig_tutorial which is indicated by the output file naming convention, _obj_obs_simple.

Display the output PNG file by running the following command:

Feel free to rerun this example to plot other fields. Switch -obs to -fcst for forecast data or -simple to -cluster or -raw.

In this example, we passed a single NetCDF MODE output file to Plot-MODE-Field. However, when you pass it multiple files on the command line it creates a plot for each.