CFVariable.update

CFVariable.update(long_name=None, standard_units=None, short_name=None, standard_name=None, *, long_prefix=None, long_suffix=None, short_prefix=None, short_suffix=None, symbol=None, sigfig=None, reference=None, colormap=None, axis_scale=None, axis_reverse=None, axis_formatter=None)[source]

Update the variable. This is called during initialization. Unspecified variables are kept at their current state. Internally, CFVariable.child variables are constructed by calling CFVariable.update on existing CFVariable objects copied with copy.copy.

Parameters

  • long_name (str, optional) – The plot-friendly variable name.

  • standard_units (str, optional) – The plot-friendly CF-compatible units string. Parsed with parse_units.

  • short_name (str, optional) – The shorter plot-friendly variable name. This is useful for describing the “category” of a variable and its descendents, e.g. “energy flux” for something with units watts per meters squared. If not provided, this is set to long_name. It is often useful to leave this unset and create child variables that inherit the parent short_name.

  • standard_name (str, optional) – The unambiguous CF-defined variable name. If one does not exist, you may construct a reasonable one based on the CF guidelines. If not provided, an ad hoc standard_name is constructed by replacing the non-alphanumeric characters in long_name with underscores. Since the standard_name is supposed to be a unique variable identifier, it is never inherited from parent variables.

  • long_prefix, long_suffix (str, optional) – Prefix and suffix to be added to the long name. Defaults to short_prefix and short_suffix.

  • short_prefix, short_suffix (str, optional) – Prefix and suffix to be added to the short name. Also sets long_prefix and long_suffix if they were not specified.

  • symbol (str, optional) – The TeX-style symbol used to represent the variable, e.g. R_o for the Rossby number or \lambda for the climate sensitivity parameter.

  • sigfig (int, optional) – The number of significant figures when printing this variable with scalar_label.

  • reference (float, optional) – The notional “reference” value for the variable (in units standard_units). Useful for parameter sweeps with respect to some value.

  • colormap (colormap-spec, optional) – The appropriate colormap when plotting this quantity. Generally this should be parsed by Colormap.

  • axis_scale (scale-spec, optional) – The axis scale name when using this quantity as an axis variable. Generally this should be parsed by Scale.

  • axis_reverse (bool, optional) – Whether to reverse the axis by default when using this quantity as an axis variable.

  • axis_formatter (formatter-spec, optional) – The axis formatter when using this quantity as an axis variable. Generally this should be parsed by Formatter. Set to False or None to revert to the default formatter.