1. Tour of NCL Website www.ncl.ucar.edu Modified by R. Grotjahn

3. NCL capabilities: Functions Support
Visualization (many graphics, map overlays, 3-D, etc.)
Mathematical (divergence, regridding, EOFs, filtering, etc.)
Statistical (correlation, spectra, wavelets, kmeans, etc.)
Earth-science specific (omega, vorticity, PV, crop variables, heat stress, Taylor diagram, etc.)
Computational (array creation, file conversion, etc.)
Support
Examples (very many, illustrative, very useful guides)
Reference listings of functions
Manuals, training exercises, and presentations
FAQs (searchable)

4. NCL capabilities: See overview: Handles many output formats
Handles many output formats
publication-ready plots
built-in capabilities, especially for earth science (>600 functions)
supports Fortran and C externals

5. NCL routines: use specifically with climate and model data
computing empirical orthogonal functions, Fourier coefficients, singular value decomposition, averages, standard deviations, sin, cosine, log, min, max, etc.
retrieving and converting date information
drawing primitives (lines, filled areas, and markers), wind barbs, weather map symbols, isosurfaces, and other graphical objects
robust file handling
1-dimensional, 2-dimensional, and 3-dimensional interpolation, approximation, and regridding
facilitating computer analysis of scalar and vector global geophysical quantities (most are based on the package known as Spherepack)
retrieving environment variables and executing system commands

6. NCL capabilities:
It can do a lot because it is built on many long-established libraries both graphical and mathematical

7. NCL Examples: Applications page www.ncl.ucar.edu/Applications/
Great starting place to find the capability you seek.
Many datasets available as well

8. NCL Examples: Applications page links: Graphics
Data Analysis
(cont.)
Applications page links:
Graphics
Cylindrical equidistant maps
Panel plots
WRF model
Vectors

9. NCL Examples: Applications page links: Datasets
File I/O
Shape files
Topography
Daymet
PRISM

10. NCL FAQs: Link: http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/FAQ/
Useful learning tool, search it if you cannot find an example that does what you want to do
Code snippets provided
Categorized, but search is usually more effective
You can ask your own questions.

11. NCL Functions: Functions are listed several ways: Also:
alphabetically:
by category grouping:
by function type grouping:
via applications examples:
Also:
Graphics resources (like ws, vc, cn, etc.):
but these are specialized, many are beyond the level of this class

12. NCL color tables:
Link:
Create your own
Use named colors
Examples: (rainbow, +/-, etc.)

13. NCL Other Popular Links:
See:
Markers:
Dashed/line patterns:
Font tables:

14. NCL Other Tools: Main link: http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/Document/Tools/
Conversion between ncl and some other formats, notably GRIB#, HDF_, shapefiles:
Wrapper to include Fortran or C functions in your NCL program:
graphics x-window viewer idt:
Links to other tools such as:
ImageMagick: for conversion between graphics types (e.g. ps  png)
mpeg2encode: to create a mpeg from a multi-frame ps file

15. NCL in python: PyNGL and PyNIO modules
PyNGL (Python interface to NCL’s graphics library)
PyNIO (Python interface to NCL’s file I/O capabilities)
Training via exercises:

16. NCL Support:
Common error messages:
Main support link:
ncl-talk:
other pages for ncl installation
questions about PyNGL and PyNIO

17. NCL Tutorials:
General link:
NCAR Powerpoints:
Example scripts (contouring, maps, overlays, vectors, shapefiles,…):
Step-by-step Graphical exercises:
Sample data files:

18. NCL End of overview: Next: NCL-04_Shea-Brownrigg_Introduction.pdf
Learn the basics of the language, make example plots.