colormap for precipitation?

[irene crisologo]

Dear fellow wradlib-users,

I was wondering if there is a universally used or recommended colormap for precipitation? It seems most are still using the rainbow colormap (and there are many versions of it!), and more and more people are saying that the use of these rainbow colormaps should end. 

The perceptually uniform sequential colormaps in matplotlib seems nice, but doesn't really feel like it suits a precipitation map.

Is there a better alternative? 

Thoughts would be appreciated.

Cheers,

irene

[Kai Mühlbauer]

Hi Irene,

thanks for starting this discussion.

Personally I've been using matplotlib's “viridis“, but reversed.

The main problem is to get this new precip-colormap used in a major paper.

Recently we had discussions on colormap's on a paper in review. The major concern was, we should use a known and widely acknowledged colormap.

I'm in favour of any color blind friendly precip-colormap.

Cheers,
Kai

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[Maik Heistermann]

Here is an interesting post on colormaps that also addresses matplotlib:

https://betterfigures.org/2015/06/23/picking-a-colour-scale-for-scientific-graphics/

Personally, though, I am not a big fan of lightness-hue ramps for precipitation maps - which is suggested by that post. If you just want to visualize general patterns, a brightness ramp is ok. But if you need to distinguish specific levels (and more than let's say 5 of them), a brightness ramp might not be sufficient. Like always, you need to be aware of your purpose... I think there is no general "best" color scale for precipitation. Would be intersting, though, to hear whether the reviewers that you, Kai, mentioned, gave specific guidance on what THEY considered a "widely acknowledged" colormap for precpitation.

Best,
Maik

Am Donnerstag, 11. August 2016 14:44:22 UTC+2 schrieb Kai Mühlbauer:

Hi Irene,

thanks for starting this discussion.

Personally I've been using matplotlib's “viridis“, but reversed.

The main problem is to get this new precip-colormap used in a major paper.

Recently we had discussions on colormap's on a paper in review. The major concern was, we should use a known and widely acknowledged colormap.

I'm in favour of any color blind friendly precip-colormap.

Cheers,
Kai

[irene crisologo]

Here's what precipitation plots look like under different matplotlib colormaps:

Precipitation with different colormaps

I used the exact same list in the matplotlib colormap reference page, though I haven't tried it with the reverse versions.

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