7. MetPy Introduction

7.1. Meteorological Python

MetPy is a Python module that contains domain specific functionality (e.g., plotting surface observations in the above describe station model format) for use in the Python programming language. This is a relatively new module and has just recently passed its 1.0 version (meaning it has reached at least a base-level of maturity). Throughout learning how to use MetPy you will be introduced to some of the basics of the Python programming language, but this is not strictly a course that will teach you Python. Primarily you’ll use the declarative syntax from MetPy to plot various types of meteorological observations and model output. Remember that whatever you tell Python to do in your code, whether it was what you intended or not, is what it is going to do! So be sure to check what you have typed in – if you are not getting a map that you think you should be getting (or get an error), it is most likely a human input error (an i-d-10-t error, as they say).

Important Notes (before we get started):

MetPy Website: https://unidata.github.io/MetPy/latest/index.html

This website has all the documentation for the current version of MetPy. You will only be introduced to what small bits of MetPy can do here today; the reference guide will go into more detail about all of the different aspects of the module that can be used to plot observational data and model output.

OR

There will be ways to get some of the help information from the development environment you will use throughout the semester (jupyter notebooks). More on that as we go along!

As a last resort you can always ask someone who has a more experience using Python, Jupyter notebooks/lab, and MetPy, as they will probably have seen and dealt with many of the problems that you might be having.