Combined atmospheric data visualization [closed]

Question

Are there any Python solutions out in the web for satellite/radar/lidar/aircraft based 2D/3D visualization of atmospheric measurements. My interest range vary from simply overlaying flight tracks over satellite images/data to co-located visualizations of lidar/radar/aircraft measurements (within themselves) and with matching satellite pixels.

I would be happy to know if such visualization attempts (tools or custom Python scripts) exist before I start working on my own solutions.

Thank you.

Answer 1

For the 2D images you might want to consider the use of NCL, produced by NCAR (The National Center for Atmospheric Research), which is specifically designed for manipulating and plotting atmospheric (meteorological) data. An impressive gallery of results is available on that site. IMO NCL's syntax can be very ugly at times, and it looks as if a python wrapper, PyNGL now exists (gallery)

For visualization of 3D atmospheric data, some of my colleagues have used a number of very impressive tools including vis5d and vapour.

For the ultimate in flexibility, mayavi2, which is basically a MATLAB style ipython interface to Kitware's VTK library is used in a huge range of scientific visualizations. I don't recommend this approach unless you're happy to 'roll your own', but it is a very nice if you need to get a three dimensional results looking just right.

Answer 2

Your question is a rather vague. Are the 2D/3D visualizations images that you have or are you rendering them yourself? Are they contour plots or arrays of data? There is a wide variety of python packages, but without being more specific I would suggest looking into this website. I've used

matplotlib.backends.backendbackend_agg.FigureCanvasAgg(fig)

for some of my data and I've heard good things about Basemap. It all depends on what you what to do with what you've got.

Answer 3

One-self answer:

ccplot

ccplot is an open source command-line application that is capable of producing two-dimensinal plots of profile, layer and earth view data sets from CloudSat CPR, CALIPSO CALIOP, and Aqua MODIS HDF4 and HDF-EOS2 files.