Marine Heatwaves detection code

marineHeatWaves is a module for python which implements the Marine Heatwave (MHW) definition of Hobday et al. (2016). A version written in R is also available.

Contents

|File |Description| |---------------------|-----------| |CHANGES.txt |A list of software versions and changes| |docs/ |Documentation folder| |LICENSE.txt |Software license information| |marineHeatWaves.py |marineHeatWaves module| |README.md |This file| |setup.py |Installation script (see below)|

Installation

This module can be installed one of two ways:

1. Standard python install. On Linux/UNIX or OS X run the following command in the terminal:

python setup.py install

or on windows run this at the command prompt (not tested)

setup.py install

2. Alternatively just copy the marineHeatWaves.py to your working directory or any other directory from which Python can import modules.

Prequisite Python modules include numpy, scipy, and datetime.

Documentation and Usage

Inside the documentation folder are the following helpful files and scripts:

|File |Description| |--------------------------|-----------| |marineHeatWaves_manual.htm|HTML file of IPython notebook outlining use of marineHeatWaves code to detect the "big three" historical marine heatwaves. Original data files (NOAA OI SST hi-res) not supplied due to copyright.| |example_synthetic.ipynb |IPython notebook outlining use of marineHeatWaves code to detect events from a synthetic time series. This notebook can be run by the user as it relies only on internally-generated synthetic temperature data.| |example_synthetic.html |Static HTML version of example_synthetic.ipynb.| |mhw_stats.py |Script with some examples of how to output plots, stats, and data files from marineHeatWaves detection code. Requires a subfolder to be created with the name 'mhw_stats', to which all files are output.|

References

Hobday, A.J. et al. (2016), A hierarchical approach to defining marine heatwaves, Progress in Oceanography, 141, pp. 227-238, doi: 10.1016/j.pocean.2015.12.014 pdf

Acknowledgements

The code was written by Eric C. J. Oliver.

Contributors to the Marine Heatwaves definition and its numerical implementation include Alistair J. Hobday, Lisa V. Alexander, Sarah E. Perkins, Dan A. Smale, Sandra C. Straub, Jessica Benthuysen, Michael T. Burrows, Markus G. Donat, Ming Feng, Neil J. Holbrook, Pippa J. Moore, Hillary A. Scannell, Alex Sen Gupta, and Thomas Wernberg.

Contact

Eric C. J. Oliver
Department of Oceanography
Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
t: (61) 902 494-2505
e: eric.oliver@dal.ca
w: http://ecjoliver.weebly.com
w: https://github.com/ecjoliver