Plot data on a global map

Hello,

I have 3D matrix of size (360,180,300). I need to plot this on a global map. 360 represents longitudes, 180 represents latitudes and 300 represents temperature at each coordinate. I can use the following to draw the map boundaries.

worldmap('world')
load coastlines
plotm(coastlat,coastlon)

Please help me with this plotting.

Answer 1

[Sulaymon Eshkabilov]

(1) Load your data

(2) Plot world map

(3) Hold on the plot figure

(4) plot your data on top of the world map. E.g.:

worldmap('world')
load coastlines
% World map plotted
plotm(coastlat,coastlon)
% Plot is held
hold on
% Load your data:
% E.g.:
X = coastlat(1:1800);
Y = coastlon(1:1800);
% Your data plotted on the top of the world map: 
plotm(X, Y, 'r--', 'LineWidth',2)

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

As discussed in https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1910990-global-map-based-on-data-from-a-3d-matrix#answer_1169590 you have the problem that you have multiple datapoints (12 in that discussion, 300 here) for each latitude and longitude combination.

The suggestions I gave there:

• draw one plot for each layer of data; or
• contour each layer of data with hold on and a different color of line. This might be difficult to understand

Otherwise, you need to start considering doing some kind of volume visualization, which might be a bit tricky to overlay on a map. You could try something like volshow or https://www.mathworks.com/help/images/ref/volumeviewer-app.html but those will not overlay on a map. And volume visualization is... difficult... to understand unless you are looking at something like isosurfaces of equal rainfail.