Taylor Diagram Example 12

How to create a Taylor diagram with multiple sets of data overlaid

A twelfth example of how to create a Taylor diagram given one set of reference observations and two sets of model predictions for the quantity.

This example shows how to display multiple data sets on the same Taylor diagram where a different color marker is used for each data set to identify its source. This is accomplished by overlaying the points from the second data set onto the Taylor diagram created using the first data set. Three data sets are used in this example where one is the reference and the other two are model predictions. This example also shows how to specify the legend using a dictionary instead of a list.

The data sets are yearly time series for years 2001-2014 comprised of an observation data set and two model predictions. The statistics needed for the target diagram have been pre-computed and are stored in a data structure in the format: taylor_stats1.sdev, taylor_stats1.crmsd, and taylor_stats1.ccoef. The plot is written to a file in Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format.

The data in these files are statistics calculated from yearly time series of Standard Precipitation Index value over the Mekong basin, a trans-boundary river in Southeast Asia that originates in the Tibetan Plateau and runs through China's Yunnan Province, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The data sources are the ERA5 climate reanalysis dataset from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM 3B42 v7) satellite data, whilst the observation data is the Asian Precipitation - Highly-Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation (APHRODITE V1801R1) rain-gauge data. All the statistics for the yearly time series are calculated using the observations for 2001 as the reference.

This data was provide courtesy of Iacopo Ferrario, Resources Scientist, HR Wallingford, Flood and Water Resources group, Wallingford Oxfordshire, United Kingdom