GRIB format is commonly used to disseminate atmospheric model data. With xarray and the cfgrib engine, GRIB data can easily be analyzed and visualized.
import xarray as xr
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
To read GRIB data, you can use xarray.load_dataset
. The only extra code you need is to specify the engine as cfgrib
.
ds = xr.tutorial.load_dataset("era5-2mt-2019-03-uk.grib", engine="cfgrib")
Let's create a simple plot of 2-m air temperature in degrees Celsius:
ds = ds - 273.15
ds.t2m[0].plot(cmap=plt.cm.coolwarm)
With CartoPy, we can create a more detailed plot, using built-in shapefiles to help provide geographic context:
import cartopy.crs as ccrs
import cartopy
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10, 10))
ax = plt.axes(projection=ccrs.Robinson())
ax.coastlines(resolution="10m")
plot = ds.t2m[0].plot(
cmap=plt.cm.coolwarm, transform=ccrs.PlateCarree(), cbar_kwargs={"shrink": 0.6}
)
plt.title("ERA5 - 2m temperature British Isles March 2019")
Finally, we can also pull out a time series for a given location easily:
ds.t2m.sel(longitude=0, latitude=51.5).plot()
plt.title("ERA5 - London 2m temperature March 2019")