13/10/2014: Very extensive updates to the Python and Courseware pages to reflect current Python distributions (especially Enthought). These updates should make it much easier to learn how to install the software on current systems. The courseware itself has also received some updates (mostly minor)l, and a setpath.py utility has been added to make it easier to set system paths so as to find the Courseware modules. In addition, a newer version of climt_lite has been included, which is easier to build and install on current Mac and Linux systems, and also includes support for rrtm, the current radiation model in use in the National Center for Atmospheric Research climate models. A precompiled climt_lite binary for Mac OS X (compatible with 10.9 Mavericks, and probably also somewhat earlier versions) will be made available soon.
11/12/2013: Updates to improve graphics made to ClimateGraphicsMPL.py . The handling of legends has been improved so legends no longer can obscure the data curves. More importantly, the plot() function has been improved so that it can now take multiple Curve objects as arguments, and put all the data on the same plot. Each Curve object can contain data of a different length if desired. This is very convenient if you are plotting data from several different datasets with differing resolutions, e.g. from different soundings, or when comparing a sounding with data. Note that these improvements have not yet been implemented for PyNGL graphics. You must be using MatPlotLib graphics to use the multi-curve plotting update.
6/12/2013: A significant bug in PyTran.py has been identified and fixed. This bug appears in the function ComputeAbsorption, and was introduced when PyTran was updated to include corrections to the temperature scaling of line strength. A new version has been uploaded to the Courseware collection. The previous version of PyTran had a spurious factor that led to a significant underestimate of absorption, and any research results conducted using that version should be recomputed.
I have updated mie.py so that it works properly with numpy . I have also updated the co2 ice index of refraction file co2i4a.rfi.txt to have Linux-style endlines. The previous version had old Mac OS9 endlines, which created problems in reading into Python on some systems, depending on how the dataset was downloaded.
The Erratum/Update document has also been updated. Apart from another pointer to the corrected version of PyTran.py, it covers some additional minor typos and clarifications.
2/17/2013: The Erratum/Update document has been updated. It contains corrections of misc. minor typographical errors, relatively inconsequential corrections to a few equations in the scattering chapter (Chapter 5), plus updates in Chapter 5 for improved clarity of derivation of the two-stream equations.
10/26/2012: The Erratum/Update document has been updated. It contains some significant corrections to the discussion of dry and moist static energy, which will be of interest to those designing convection schemes or time-dependent energy balance models. A few more minor typos are corrected as well.
5/20/2012: A cleaned up and improved version of the Chapter 9 script SteadyLinearDiffusiveEBM.py has been posted. I have also posted a revised version of the Chapter 4 script GreyGasFlux.py. The code organization has been changed to correspond more closely to the equations given in the text. I have also fixed a bug in the boundary terms. This bug didn't affect any results shown in the text, but would affect cases where the ground temperature differs from the low level air temperature, or where the isothermal stratospheric temperature is nonzero. Also updated the erratum sheet and phys.py with corrected critical point pressure for NH3 .
3/14/2012: I have posted the first erratum/updates sheet here. Note particularly the correction in Chapter 4 regarding the algebraic prefactor in temperature scaling of line strength. The Chapter 4 script Pytran.py has been updated to reflect this correction.
10/12/2011: MatPlotLib support has been added. Download ClimateGraphicsMPL.py and an updated version of ClimateUtilities.py from the Courseware page. I have been using MatPlotLib with Python 2.7 from the Enthought distribution, and it works fine. There is no need to use the older Python 2.6 distribution. Most users will find it easiest to use MatPlotLib for graphics, since the single-click Enthough distribution gives you everything you need to run the courseware. For Windows users, MatPlotLib with Enthought is by far the simplest way to use the courseware
1/28/2012: The Chapter Script ccmRadConv.py (in the Chapter 5 collection) had not been updated to work with the current version of climt_lite. I have fixed that, as well as a few of the old Numeric calls that didn't work with numpy.
Further, there was a bug in the handling of plot legends in ClimateGraphicsMPL.py that prevented it from working properly with the Enthought 7.2.x distribution. That has been fixed.
