TOVS Path-P IDL Tools Tutorial

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Tutorial 2: Color displays of SDS data from TOVS Path-P files

This section of the tutorial explains how to display a color image of a specific parameter and date and explains how to display a color animation of a specific parameter for a range of dates. You will learn how to use the following IDL procedures:

PPP_SHOW - Displaying data for one parameter on a given date

To display a color image of a specific parameter for a given date with map and graticule overlays use PPP_SHOW, which is similar to PPP_STATS in that it only has one required argument, sds_name, one of the strings that you select from the parameter listing from PPP_TOC. You can specify the date of the file to read by using the DATE keyword (either a string or integer of the form yyyyddd). Once again, the DATE keyword is not required because you might wish to display one of the static, ancillary parameters. For an example, see the TOVS Path-P PPP_SHOW Example.

PPP_SHOW accepts a number of other keywords that allow you to set the displayed label or legend title, force a new window to be opened, or to return the actual data array or its associated metadata in named variables. Please refer to the Extended Help Documentation for details on the other keywords to PPP_SHOW.

PPP_ANIMATE - Displaying an animated series of data for a range of dates

Now that you are familiar with the way temperature data can be displayed for a single day, you can use PPP_ANIMATE to extract a 3-D time-series of a given parameter and a range of dates. Like PPP_STATS and PPP_SHOW, PPP_ANIMATE has sds_name as one required argument and a number of keywords for flexibility.

Like PPP_STATS, PPP_ANIMATE accepts keywords for a date range (START_DATE and END_DATE) or an array of dates (DATES). The defaults are the beginning and end of all TOVS Path-P data found under the current directory, however, since this routine is very memory intensive, it is recommended that you limit the dates that you animate according to your system's memory. For example, a movie of only 100 days would require 670 columns x 670 rows x 100 days which is almost 45 Mb of memory. Since each user's system is different, there are no safeguards built into PPP_ANIMATE to limit the number of dates you may include; so use this routine with care. For an example, see the TOVS Path-P PPP_ANIMATE Example

Please refer to the Extended Help Documentation for details on the other keywords to PPP_ANIMATE.

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