DROUGHTSTRIPES (Duerrestreifen)

Droughtstripes show the precipitation anomaly for each year (or a specific month of a year) in comparison to the reference period (here: 1971 - 2000). The idea is based on the warming stripes invented by Ed Hawkins (https://showyourstripes.info/faq) and shall show the effects of the climate crisis on precipitation.

This code creates droughtstipes from data of the Deutsche Wetterdienst (DWD) for a selectable month of the year. You can chose to create a plot for as many federal states as you want or for the whole country.

Example

Droughtstripes for Germany and for each April in 1881 - 2020, brown = negative anomaly (less precipitation than average), turquoise = positive anomaly (more precipitation than average).

Prerequisits

The code is written in Python3 but can be easily adjusted to Python2.7 (see line 37 of the code for information)

Required Python Packages

numpy
matplotlib
pandas
urllib

Manual Adjustments To Be Made When Using This Code

Mandatory

1. chose month you want to plot (line 18)
2. chose local file path to store raw data as txt-file (line 20)
3. chose federal states you want to plot (line 71) by adding the number of the state according to dictionary (lines 62-67)

Not Mandatory Adjustments, Just To Play Around

1. adjust colorbar by changing colors in function custom_div_cmap or use a predifined colorbar from matplotlib
2. adjust reference period to see how this changes the anomalies
3. adjust the limits of the colorbar by chosing different standard deviations

Authors

Scientists for Future Leipzig