Operational 2 m temperature animation¶

This uses cleopatra's temperature_2m data-style — the operational default: the muted Spectral_r colour ramp rendered as discrete 2 °C contour bands over −40…40 °C with the out-of-range ends capped (extend="both") — the look of a professional weather-service chart, not the neon blue→magenta rainbow. (The generic temperature preset auto-ranges to the data instead; pass it vmin/vmax to pin a non-Celsius field to a chosen range.)

The map is composed like an reference chart: temperature bands + grey coastlines/borders + an arrow-capped colorbar labelled with the contour levels, over the real ERA5-Land data (1 Jun – 15 Jul 2026).

In [1]:

from pathlib import Path

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

from cleopatra.glyphs.base.animation import embed_gif
from cleopatra.glyphs.gridded.array_glyph import ArrayGlyph

# --- data: an ERA5-Land 2 m-temperature stack over Europe (°C, 23 daily frames) ---
npz = np.load(Path("../../../examples/data/europe_t2m.npz"), allow_pickle=True)
celsius = npz["celsius"][::2]  # every other day
labels = list(npz["labels"])[::2]
west, south, east, north = (float(v) for v in npz["extent"])
extent = [west, east, south, north]  # ArrayGlyph extent order: [xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax]

print("stack:", celsius.shape, "| frames:", labels[0], "->", labels[-1])
from cleopatra.styling.params import DataStyle

from pathlib import Path import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np from cleopatra.glyphs.base.animation import embed_gif from cleopatra.glyphs.gridded.array_glyph import ArrayGlyph # --- data: an ERA5-Land 2 m-temperature stack over Europe (°C, 23 daily frames) --- npz = np.load(Path("../../../examples/data/europe_t2m.npz"), allow_pickle=True) celsius = npz["celsius"][::2] # every other day labels = list(npz["labels"])[::2] west, south, east, north = (float(v) for v in npz["extent"]) extent = [west, east, south, north] # ArrayGlyph extent order: [xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax] print("stack:", celsius.shape, "| frames:", labels[0], "->", labels[-1]) from cleopatra.styling.params import DataStyle

stack: (23, 111, 164) | frames: Jun 01 -> Jul 15

The animation¶

Everything comes from one thing: style="temperature_2m". ArrayGlyph reads the preset for the Spectral_r ramp, the 2 °C contour bands, extend="both", and the arrow-capped colorbar; .animate() runs the per-frame loop — no manual ScalarMappable, BoundaryNorm, imshow, or FuncAnimation. The coastlines/borders are added straight on the glyph with add_features (its own GeoMixin method), before animating: the first add_features call creates the axes, and animate reuses it.

In [2]:

glyph = ArrayGlyph(celsius, extent=extent)

# Add the reference layers on the glyph itself. The first call creates the axes;
# `animate` below reuses it, so the coastlines/borders sit under the data frames.
glyph.add_features("coastline", "50m", color="0.35", linewidth=0.6, zorder=5)
glyph.add_features("borders", "50m", color="0.55", linewidth=0.4, zorder=5)

anim = glyph.animate(data_style=DataStyle(style="temperature_2m"), 
    time=labels,
    colorbar=True,  # a full arrow-capped reference colorbar instead of the preset swatch
    title="ERA5-Land 2 m temperature",
)
plt.close(glyph.fig)  # drop the figure from the inline backend so only the GIF shows
embed_gif(anim, fps=6)

glyph = ArrayGlyph(celsius, extent=extent) # Add the reference layers on the glyph itself. The first call creates the axes; # `animate` below reuses it, so the coastlines/borders sit under the data frames. glyph.add_features("coastline", "50m", color="0.35", linewidth=0.6, zorder=5) glyph.add_features("borders", "50m", color="0.55", linewidth=0.4, zorder=5) anim = glyph.animate(data_style=DataStyle(style="temperature_2m"), time=labels, colorbar=True, # a full arrow-capped reference colorbar instead of the preset swatch title="ERA5-Land 2 m temperature", ) plt.close(glyph.fig) # drop the figure from the inline backend so only the GIF shows embed_gif(anim, fps=6)

Out[2]:

<IPython.core.display.Image object>

That whole reference chart — banded Spectral_r, the 2 °C levels, extend="both", the arrow-capped colorbar, coastlines — is one ArrayGlyph(..., style="temperature_2m") plus .animate(...), because the look is baked into the preset. The same one line styles a static .plot() too. For a field that is not fixed to the reference −40 … 40 °C window, use the generic temperature style (optionally with vmin/vmax), which auto-ranges to the data.