Multiple lines of x tick labels in matplotlib

Question

I'm trying to make a plot similar to this excel example:

I would like to know if there is anyways to have a second layer on the x tick labels (e.g. "5 Year Statistical Summary"). I know I can make multi-line tick labels using \n but I want to be able to shift the two levels independently.

Answer 1

this gets close:

fig = plt.figure( figsize=(8, 4 ) ) ax = fig.add_axes( [.05, .1, .9, .85 ] ) ax.set_yticks( np.linspace(0, 200, 11 ) )  xticks = [ 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10 ] xticks_minor = [ 1, 5, 7, 9, 11 ] xlbls = [ 'background', '5 year statistical summary', 'future build',           'maximum day', '90th percentile day', 'average day' ]  ax.set_xticks( xticks ) ax.set_xticks( xticks_minor, minor=True ) ax.set_xticklabels( xlbls ) ax.set_xlim( 1, 11 )  ax.grid( 'off', axis='x' ) ax.grid( 'off', axis='x', which='minor' )  # vertical alignment of xtick labels va = [ 0, -.05, 0, -.05, -.05, -.05 ] for t, y in zip( ax.get_xticklabels( ), va ):     t.set_y( y )  ax.tick_params( axis='x', which='minor', direction='out', length=30 ) ax.tick_params( axis='x', which='major', bottom='off', top='off' ) 

Answer 2

I'm unable to comment on behzad's answer due to lack of reputation. I found his solution to be immensely helpful, but I thought I'd share that instead of controlling the vertical alignment by using set_y(), I just added a newline character to vertically offset the labels. So, for the above example:

xlbls = [ 'background', '\n5 year statistical summary', 'future build',       '\nmaximum day', '\n90th percentile day', '\naverage day' ] 

For me, this was a better solution for keeping multi-lined labels and multi-layered labels vertically aligned.