MetPy 1.0: An Upgrade from GEMPAK for Twenty-First Century Atmospheric Science Data Analysis and Visualization

MetPy is an open-source Python package for meteorology, designed to fit well within the scientific Python stack (numpy, matplotlib, etc.). Its goal is to bring the scripted weather analysis capabilities of GEMPAK (and tools like it) to the powerful scientific Python ecosystem. The guiding principle is to make MetPy easy to use with any dataset that can be read into Python. MetPy’s general functionality breaks down into: reading data, meteorological calculations, and meteorology-specific plotting.

MetPy has recently seen the release of version 1.0, its first stable release. This work provides an overview of MetPy’s suite of capabilities and recent additions, built by MetPy’s core developers and community contributors. These include integration with XArray, many unit-aware calculations, SkewT and GEMPAK-like plotting, and METAR parsing and station model plots. Changes to existing features for the long term stability of the 1.0 version line are also discussed. Additionally, the longer term plans for MetPy, along with plans to further engage and grow MetPy’s community of users and contributors will be addressed.