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Generate a macro which will reproduce your plot with a single click. This can be done either by clicking the Generate Macro button from the Display Window or by editing a new Macro icon, dropping your data and visdef icons into it and adding a plot() command.

Extra Work

Try the following if you have time.

Ensuring the title has the correct date and time

There are various ways we can ensure that the title has the date and time according to the actual data. The default title in fact contains the date and time, but in this exercise we want more control over it.

Construct the second line of the title by extracting the date and time from the MSLP field and converting into an appropriate string - do this in the Macro code.

Hints:

• if you have a fieldset variable called msl_grib, the following line will extract the date at which the field is valid:
  • msl_date = grib_get_long(msl_grib, 'validityDate')
• we can do something similar for the validity time
• these are extracted as integer numbers, but can be combined into a proper date variable in Macro:

  • full_date = date(msl_date) + hour(msl_time)

• use the string() function to construct a date string similar to the one used in the current title
  • see String Functions for details of how to use it
• insert this into the mtext() function instead of the current title
• it is now more robust - if you use data from a different date or time, the title will still be correct