skewt.axis {RadioSonde} R Documentation

Draws a SKEW-T, log p axis.

Description

Draws a SKEW-T, log p axis. This is the standard axis for interpreting atmospheric sounding profiles like those collected by the instrument carried aloft by a weather balloon (radiosonde). Use skewt.lines or skewt.points to layer information on top of the skewt axis.

Usage

skewt.axis(BROWN="brown", GREEN="green", redo=F, mar=c(2.5, 3.1, 2.1, 5.1))

Arguments

BROWN Color of lines for both Temperature (solid skewed) and Pressure (dashed horizontal)
GREEN Color of lines for dry adiabats (solid) and constant mixing ratio (dashed)
redo flag to generate the adiabats, should skewt.data become corrupt. The adiabats are the result of an iterative process and to make smooth curves, you need a lot of points. Hence this is time-consuming, so [FALSE] is the preferred value.

Details

Radiosondes record temperature, humidity and winds. They can be lifted by weather balloons, dropped from aircraft, there is even something called a glidersonde. The data collected by radiosondes are plotted versus pressure/height to give details on the vertical structure of the atmosphere. The type of plot is called a SKEW-T, log p diagram.
`skewt.axis' creates the traditional axis for a SKEW-T, log p diagram, including moist and dry adiabats, etc ...
Generating the necessary plot data is time-consuming, so there is an option to read from a specific dataset that Doug will change.

Value

Returns the par()$plt values, which are used by plotsonde if you choose to plot the wind profile adjacent to the skewt axis.

Author(s)

Tim Hoar

See Also

getsonde, plotsonde, plotwind, skewt.lines, skewt.points

Examples

# draw a background, then
#    draw the temperature (with a solid line) in color 6
#    draw the dewpoint in color 7
#    overlay the temperature observations in a different color
#    you get the point ...
#
filename <- paste(.path.package("RadioSonde"),"data","ExampleSonde.txt",sep="/")
sample.sonde <- getsonde(filename)
skewt.axis()
skewt.lines( sample.sonde$temp,  sample.sonde$press, col = 6)
skewt.lines( sample.sonde$dewpt, sample.sonde$press, col = 7)
skewt.points(sample.sonde$temp,  sample.sonde$press, col = 3)
skewt.points(sample.sonde$dewpt, sample.sonde$press, col = 4)
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