Usage of PALM NCL scripts

The standard output format of data in PALM is netCDF. PALM produces output of 3D volume data, 2D cross sections, profiles, timeseries and spectra. All these kinds of output can be plotted with the NCAR Command Language ​NCL which is an interpreted language designed specifically for scientific data analysis and visualization.

For PALM users four NCL scripts and one configuation file exist in the repository trunk/SCRIPTS/NCL to receive a quick overview of the output data:

• cross_sections.ncl: contour, isoline or vector plots (of a 2-dimensional vector) from 2D or 3D data; instantaneous or time-averaged xy, xz, yz or 3D data can be used
• profiles.ncl: profile line plots from profile or 3D data
• spectra.ncl: NCL spectra plots from spectra data
• timeseries.ncl: line plots from timeseries data
• .ncl.config.default: default configuration file

The shell script palmplot is designed for running the NCL scripts interactively and can be found in /trunk/SCRIPTS. The usage is as follows:

palmplot plot_identifier

plot_identifier has to be xy, xz, yz, pr, sp, ts in dependence of the data that is to be plotted: