vertical_totals

metpy.calc.vertical_totals(pressure, temperature, vertical_dim=0)

Calculate Vertical Totals from the pressure and temperature.

Vertical Totals formula derived from [Miller1972]:

\[VT = T850 - T500\]

where:

• \(T850\) is the temperature at 850 hPa

• \(T500\) is the temperature at 500 hPa

Calculation of the Vertical Totals is defined as the temperature difference between 850 hPa and 500 hPa. This is a part of the Total Totals Index.

Parameters:

• pressure (pint.Quantity) – Pressure level(s), in order from highest to lowest pressure

• temperature (pint.Quantity) – Temperature corresponding to pressure

• vertical_dim (int, optional) – The axis corresponding to vertical, defaults to 0. Automatically determined from xarray DataArray arguments.

Returns:

pint.Quantity – Vertical Totals

Examples

>>> from metpy.calc import vertical_totals
>>> from metpy.units import units
>>> # pressure
>>> p = [1008., 1000., 950., 900., 850., 800., 750., 700., 650., 600.,
...      550., 500., 450., 400., 350., 300., 250., 200.,
...      175., 150., 125., 100., 80., 70., 60., 50.,
...      40., 30., 25., 20.] * units.hPa
>>> # temperature
>>> T = [29.3, 28.1, 23.5, 20.9, 18.4, 15.9, 13.1, 10.1, 6.7, 3.1,
...      -0.5, -4.5, -9.0, -14.8, -21.5, -29.7, -40.0, -52.4,
...      -59.2, -66.5, -74.1, -78.5, -76.0, -71.6, -66.7, -61.3,
...      -56.3, -51.7, -50.7, -47.5] * units.degC
>>> # compute vertical totals index
>>> vertical_totals(p, T)
<Quantity(22.9, 'delta_degree_Celsius')>

Examples using metpy.calc.vertical_totals

Sounding Calculation Examples

Sounding Calculation Examples