Map

This module serves as a Basemap-like wrapper for Cartopy.

Installation

git clone https://github.com/tomerburg/Map
cd Map
python setup.py install

Dependencies

This module requires Python 3.6 or newer, MetPy 0.10 or newer, Cartopy and Matplotlib to work.

Usage

The purpose of this module is to provide usability similar to that of Basemap for plotting with Cartopy. For example, creating a PlateCarree projection can be done as follows, by creating an instance of a Map object:

from Map import Map
m = Map(projection='PlateCarree',central_longitude=0.0,res='h')

The 'res' argument provides a default resolution for plotting geographic and political boundaries, using Cartopy's available resolutions: Low: 'l' or '110m' Moderate: 'm' or '50m' High: 'h' or '10m'

The next step is to create a figure and axes instance. The projection is stored as an attribute of the Map object, so it can be retrieved via "m.proj":

plt.figure(figsize=(14,9))
ax = plt.axes(projection=m.proj)

Geography can then be drawn similarly to Basemap's functionality. Note that if you want to use a different resolution for any of these than that specified for the default, it can be added as an argument to each of these functions (e.g., "m.drawcoastlines(res='m')).

m.drawcoastlines(linewidth=1.0)
m.drawcountries(linewidth=1.0)
m.drawstates(linewidth=0.5,color='gray')

Counties are also available, but since Cartopy doesn't have a county shapefile, this function makes use of MetPy's county shapefiles.

m.drawcounties(linewidth=0.1,alpha=0.5)

Filling land, lakes and oceans is also available:

m.fillcontinents(zorder=0)
m.filloceans(zorder=0,res='l')
m.filllakes(zorder=0)

There are also additional functions for contour, contourf, colorbar, barbs and quiver that have similar functionality to that of Basemap as well. For instance, if there is a dataset in lat/lon coordinates, the following functions will assume a default PlateCarree() projection (unless a different data projection is passed as an argument), and the colorbar will be resized to the same height or width of the main axis.

cs = m.contourf(lon,lat,data)
m.colorbar(cs)