Instructions for plotting of NCEP reanalysis zonally averaged fields

 

Go to ESRL Monthly/Seasonal Composite and follow the steps below:

1) Under ‘Which Variable?’, select the field you would like to plot.

2) Enter beginning and ending month of climatology (e.g. Jan to Jan for only January, Jun-Aug for NH summer, etc…).

3) Enter a range of years. For the long term climatology, enter maximum range possible as allowed by dataset.

Optionally, you can scale the plot to be larger than the default image size

4) Under ‘Map projection’, select ‘Latitude by height’ for a zonal average.

5) Enter lowest latitude as -90 and highest latitude as 90 to get the full globe.

Note, for omega (vertical velocity), you will need to set the upper level at 100mb.

6) Click create plot. You should get something that looks similar to the figure below if you selected temperature as your variable.