GMT Tutorial for Beginners

Requirements:

• Pre-installed GMT-5, check by typing gmt in terminal.
• Pre-installed netcdf-5, check by typing ncdump.
• Pre-installed ghostview package, check by typing gv.
• Downloaded ETOPO1_Bed_g_gmt4.grd in the Data directory from the NOAA website.

Installing GMT

In Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install gmt gmt-dcw gmt-gshhg

In Mac: brew install gmt

For other operating systems, check GMT website

Description of the Package:

The package consists of three directories: Data, Scripts and Figures.

• The Data directory contains the data files required to run the scripts in the Scripts directory.
• The Scripts directory consists of all the bash scripts numbered from 1-8.
  • 1linearPlots.sh: Contains commands for making basemap for linear projections including the log-log plot. It also explains how to add title, xlabel, ylabel, tick-marks, background-color to the plot.
  • 2PlottingMaps.sh: This explains how to plot the Mercator projection, Alber's projection, Orthographic projection, Eckert projection.
  • 3PlottingLinesSymbols.sh: This script explains the use of psxy command to plot the lines and symbols. It also contains the commands to plot the earthquake epicenter with colors representing depths and symbol size representing magnitude.
  • 4PlottingTexts.sh: This script explains how to type texts onto the plots. The user can even type mathematical equations.
  • 5Plottingcontours.sh: This bash script explains how to plot the contour lines using the command grdcontour. It also explains how to cut the large data set using the grdcut command and obtain the information about it using the grdinfo. It also explains how to do interpolation of data (nearest neighbour and spline).
  • 6Manipulating_Images.sh: It contains the description of how to make the cpt files, and plot the colorbars using psscale command. It also explains plotting the relief data.
  • 7multiD_maps.sh: This script explains how to plot the multidimensional netcdf data in GMT.
  • 8three-DPlots.sh: It includes how to plot the data as 3D plots using two methods: mesh plot, color-coded surface.
• The Figures directory consists of all the example plots from 1-24.