Difference between revisions of "Some Ferret tips and pointers"

Revision as of 13:35, 17 October 2023

Ferret

Ferret is a NetCDF vizualisation tool which can be used to postprocess and visualize PCM outputs.

This free software is from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the relevant webpage where you can learn how to install and use it is here: https://ferret.pmel.noaa.gov/Ferret/

[For Mac users] It is recommended to use/migrate-to PyFerret. However, There is a bug in the Mac OSX version as of 2023-June with respect to plotting. The bug is not subtle as the plotting does not work. See section below.

For first timers

Ferret is essentially a command line tool so the first thing you'll need to do is launch it from your terminal

ferret

(on some system, e.g. Ubuntu, the executable is called ferret_viz because another unrelated software also called ferret exists).

Once under Ferret you should see the Ferret prompt:

yes?

To load a datafile, for example diagfi.nc issue command:

yes? use diagfi.nc

Once the file has been loaded, you can query for its contents with the command show data ...

Various tips and pointers

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How to make a 1D plot

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How to make a 2D map

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How to compute a zonal average

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Installation tips

Mac OSX (PyFerret) and Graphics bug

Miniconda

conda is the preferred environment for the install. miniconda (a subset of conda) is a lighter-weight option which is a good choice. Installation instructions for both may be found [[1]].

PyFerret

Once one has a conda installation of some type, the instructions are straight-forward. The official installation documentation is [[2]].

Commands used on a Macbook Pro with the M2 ARM chipset (summer 2023)