| Version 6 (modified by heinze, 14 years ago) (diff) |
|---|
Usage of PALM NCL scripts
General
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 or ts in dependence on the data that is to be plotted:
| plot_identifier | data | used ncl script |
|---|---|---|
| xy | instantaneous or time-averaged xy or 3D data | cross_sections.ncl |
| xz | instantaneous or time-averaged xz or 3D data | cross_sections.ncl |
| yz | instantaneous or time-averaged yz or 3D data | cross_sections.ncl |
| pr | profile or 3D data | profiles.ncl |
| sp | spectra data | spectra.ncl |
| yz | timeseries data | timeseries.ncl |
Several parameters can be steered to change the output of the plots. They can be either written in the prompt or modified within the configuration file .ncl.config.default.
Using .ncl.config
It is recommended to create a personal configuration file by copying the default configuration file .ncl.config. default to the PALM working directory ~/palm/current_version and naming it .ncl.config. It is used by NCL directly. So, the parameters have to be written in .ncl.config according to the rules of the scripting language NCL. The configuration file contains all steering parameters with a short description and can be modified to personal needs.
