Recipe: Visualize OPeNDAP data using Panoply

Back to G5NR Data Access Guide.

Problem

By accessing the collection inst01hr_3d_T_Cv via the OPeNDAP server

http://opendap.nccs.nasa.gov/dods/OSSE/G5NR/Ganymed/7km

we want to plot the air temperature data at the surface for 2006/Sep/18, 9z using panoply.

Solution

Panoply (v 4.0.5) is a cross-platform application that plots geo-gridded and other arrays from NetCDF, HDF, GRIB, and other datasets. For more information, please see

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/panoply/

Once panoply is installed, it can be launched from the command line via

> panoply.sh

assuming that the shell script panoply.sh is in the user's path.

Once launched, the following window is presented

To access the collection inst01hr_3d_T_Cv from the OPeNDAP server, we click on File -> 'Open Remote Dataset' and enter the url

http://opendap.nccs.nasa.gov:80/dods/OSSE/G5NR/Ganymed/7km/0.5000_deg/inst/inst01hr_3d_T_Cv

in the input box and click on 'Load'. This leads to the display

To load the downloaded data file click on File -> Open... and from the file browser we choose the file. Opening the file leads to the display

Here, we select our variable, T, from the 'Datasets' tab and click on 'Create Plot'. In the new window that appears, we select the first option 'Create geogridded Longitude-Latitude plot' and click on 'Create'. To plot the air temperature at the surface (level=72), in the 'Array(s)' Tab we set the 'Vertical level:' to 72 and check the 'Always fit to data' box in the 'Scale' tab resulting in

See Also

1. File Spec: File:G5NR-Ganymed-7km FileSpec-ON6-V1.0.pdf
2. Recipe: Fortran program to read data from downloaded file