1. Overview

1.1. Purpose and Organization of the User’s Guide

The goal of this User’s Guide is to provide basic information for users of METplotpy. METplotpy is a Python-based plotting library designed to generate a wide range of diagnostic and verification visualizations. It helps users interpret verification statistics through meaningful plots, making it easier to evaluate forecast performance and model behavior.

The METplotpy User’s Guide is organized as follows. An overview of METplotpy can be found below. The guide also includes information about how to create a variety of plots and diagrams including, for example but not limited to, box plots, bar plots, performance diagrams, reliability diagrams, and more.

1.2. The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC)

METplotpy has been developed, and will be maintained and enhanced, by the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC; http://www.dtcenter.org/ ). The main goal of the DTC is to serve as a bridge between operations and research, to facilitate the activities of these two important components of the numerical weather prediction (NWP) community. The DTC provides an environment that is functionally equivalent to the operational environment in which the research community can test model enhancements; the operational community benefits from DTC testing and evaluation of models before new models are implemented operationally. METplotpy serves both the research and operational communities in this way - offering capabilities for researchers to test their own enhancements to models and providing a capability for the DTC to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of advances in NWP prior to operational implementation.

METplotpy will also be available to DTC visitors and to the modeling community for testing and evaluation of new model capabilities, applications in new environments, and so on.

1.3. Future Development Plans

METplotpy is an evolving software package. New capabilities are planned in controlled, successive version releases. Bug fixes and user-identified problems will be addressed as they are found. Plans are also in place to incorporate new capabilities and options in future releases of METplotpy.

1.4. User Support

METplotpy is one component of the larger METplus system for which user support is provided through the METplus GitHub Discussions Forum, as described in the METplus User’s Guide.