earthkit-plots-dccms-styles

DCCMS (Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services of Malawi) colour schemes and styles for earthkit-plots visualisations.

This package provides colour schemes and styling configurations for earthkit-plots, following DCCMS visual standards.

Installation

Install directly from the GitHub repository:

pip install earthkit-plots-dccms-styles@git+https://github.com/metno/earthkit-plots-dccms-styles

Quick Start

import earthkit.plots as ekp

# Activate DCCMS styling
ekp.schema.use('dccms')

# Your plotting will now automatically use DCCMS styles
chart = ekp.quickplot(data)

Examples

Basic Usage with Automatic Styling

import earthkit.plots as ekp
import earthkit.data as ekd

# Enable DCCMS schema
ekp.schema.use('dccms')

ds = ekd.from_source("sample", "era5-2t-msl-1985122512.grib")

# Plot data - automatically detects variable and applies appropriate styling
temperature_chart = ekp.quickplot(ds, domain='Malawi')

Customising Plot Appearance

import earthkit.plots as ekp
import earthkit.data as ekd

temperature, pressure = ekd.from_source("sample", "era5-2t-msl-1985122512.grib")

ekp.schema.use('dccms')

# Create a map with custom domain and styling options
chart = ekp.Map(
    domain='Malawi', 
)

chart.quickplot(temperature)
chart.quickplot(pressure, units="hPa")

# Add geographic features
chart.coastlines()
chart.borders()
chart.gridlines()

# Display the plot
chart.show()

Available Weather Variable Styles

The package includes optimised styles for:

• Temperature: near-surface-air-temperature, sea-surface-temperature, dew-point-temperature
• Precipitation: total-precipitation
• Atmospheric: cloud-cover, relative-humidity, mean-sea-level-pressure
• Wind: wind-speed-at-10m, vertical-velocity-at-100m

Example Output

The examples folder contains sample visualisations demonstrating the DCCMS styling:

File Name	Description	Preview
2t-Malawi.png	Temperature visualisation for Malawi
tp-Africa.png	Precipitation map across Africa
tcc-Malawi.png	Cloud cover analysis
r-Africa.png	Relative humidity patterns

Magics

The same styles are also available in the Magics style-library format. Installing this package deploys a complete Magics style library — the stock ECMWF one with the DCCMS styles merged in — to <sys.prefix>/share/magics/styles/dccms. Point MAGICS_STYLE_PATH at it and Magics will pick the DCCMS style for a field from its metadata:

export MAGICS_STYLE_PATH="$(python -c 'import sys; print(sys.prefix)')/share/magics/styles/dccms"

from Magics import macro as magics

magics.plot(
    magics.output(output_formats=["png"], output_name="2t"),
    magics.mmap(subpage_map_projection="cylindrical"),
    magics.mgrib(grib_input_file_name="2t.grib"),
    magics.mcont(contour_automatic_setting="ecmwf"),
    magics.mlegend(),
    magics.mcoast(),
)

See share/magics/styles/dccms/README.md for the full contents, how to install the DCCMS map decoration as a Magics theme, and the handful of places where the two formats do not line up. The DCCMS pieces are generated from the YAML styles by python tools/earthkit_to_magics.py, which merges them into the vendored copy of the stock ECMWF library in share/magics/styles/dccms.