Can I make a surface or colormap with latitude, longitude, and concentration using MATLAB? (photo example)

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Hi there,
I am assisting in some research based on climate model outputs. I have datasets for various values (e.g. CO2 concentration, water vapor concentration) at various latitude and longitudes (of systematic intervals). I also need to create similar colored maps for latitude vs. altitude. [Picture examples are linked to below.] I basically have the datasets in txt files that are about a 20 x 20 matrix based on the lat/long intervals.
Can I create these graphs using MATLAB? How should I go about doing this?
Thank you so much!
Aaron

Accepted Answer

Patrick Kalita
Patrick Kalita on 17 Aug 2011
Have you looked at the pcolor function? Here's an example:
[x,y,z] = peaks;
pcolor(x,y,z);
Based on your example pictures, you may also want to do this:
shading interp
The "vertical" picture also appears to have some contour lines:
[x,y,z] = peaks;
pcolor(x,y,z);
shading interp
hold on
contour(x,y,z, [-2, 2], 'EdgeColor', 'k');
Other commands you might want to look at: clabel, colorbar.
  2 Comments
Aaron Burdick
Aaron Burdick on 17 Aug 2011
Thanks Patrick! I tried using the pcolor function. It changes my X (long) and Y (lat) vectors into matrices with min and max of -3 and 3. It also changes the Min/Max of my Z matrix to -6.5/8.07.
I need the axis values for X and Y to correctly maintain the Longtitude and Latitude values I've entered. Also I need the absolute values for matrix Z to remain unchanged, since these are gas concentrations differences and I need the color bar to reflect the actual concentration values.
Thanks again for your help!
Aaron
Patrick Kalita
Patrick Kalita on 19 Aug 2011
I was just using the PEAKS function to generate sample data. Don't use that in your actual plot. Substitute your own data for x, y, and z.

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