MetPy is a collection of tools in Python for reading, visualizing and performing calculations with weather data.
MetPy is still in an early stage of development, and as such no APIs are considered stable. While we won't break things just for fun, many things may still change as we work through design issues.
We support Python 2.7 as well as Python >= 3.3.
- Source code repository: https://github.com/Unidata/MetPy
- HTML Documentation (stable release): http://metpy.readthedocs.org/en/stable/
- HTML Documentation (development): http://metpy.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
- Issue tracker: http://github.com/Unidata/MetPy/issues
- Gitter chat room: https://gitter.im/Unidata/MetPy
Other required packages:
- Numpy
- Scipy
- Matplotlib
- Pint
Python versions older than 3.4 require the enum34 package, which is a backport of the standard library enum module.
There is also an optional dependency on the pyproj library for geographic projections (used with CDM interface).
Imposter syndrome disclaimer: We want your help. No, really.
There may be a little voice inside your head that is telling you that you're not ready to be an open source contributor; that your skills aren't nearly good enough to contribute. What could you possibly offer a project like this one?
We assure you - the little voice in your head is wrong. If you can write code at all, you can contribute code to open source. Contributing to open source projects is a fantastic way to advance one's coding skills. Writing perfect code isn't the measure of a good developer (that would disqualify all of us!); it's trying to create something, making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes. That's how we all improve, and we are happy to help others learn.
Being an open source contributor doesn't just mean writing code, either. You can help out by writing documentation, tests, or even giving feedback about the project (and yes - that includes giving feedback about the contribution process). Some of these contributions may be the most valuable to the project as a whole, because you're coming to the project with fresh eyes, so you can see the errors and assumptions that seasoned contributors have glossed over.
For more information, please read the see the contributing guide.
The space MetPy aims for is GEMPAK (and maybe NCL)-like functionality, in a way that plugs easily into the existing scientific Python ecosystem (numpy, scipy, matplotlib). So, if you take the average GEMPAK script for a weather map, you need to:
- read data
- calculate a derived field
- show on a map/skew-T
One of the benefits hoped to achieve over GEMPAK is to make it easier to use these routines for any meteorological Python application; this means making it easy to pull out the LCL calculation and just use that, or re-use the Skew-T with your own data code. MetPy also prides itself on being well-documented and well-tested, so that on-going maintenance is easily manageable.
The intended audience is that of GEMPAK: researchers, educators, and any one wanting to script up weather analysis. It doesn't even have to be scripting; all python meteorology tools are hoped to be able to benefit from MetPy. Conversely, it's hoped to be the meteorological equivalent of the audience of scipy/scikit-learn/skimage.