Hi John, > > > > Your question is really about how to interpret the coordinates. The same > > Actually, my question was more fundamental than an interpretation of > the coordinates. (I can wire in a projection module later if I want to > display the data on a globe.) At first, I usually just render the data > in a cartesian "box". That is, I'm willing to take the lat's and lon's > and just treat them as "distances" along 2 axes, but I would like the > visualization to reflect the fact that, eg, the lon and lat spacing > differ, so that I can get something close to a "correct" aspect ratio. > What's the rule that tell me that lat(2,3) is the y-axis coordinate for > temp(2,3)? When you refer to a "correct" aspect ratio aren't you talking about an interpretation issue? You only know that a one degree lon spacing corresponds to a smaller great circle distance the closer you get to the pole because you are interpreting the coordinate as a longitude coordinate. If you're not interested in that interpretation of the coordinate variable then it seems to me that it doesn't matter which one you assign to the y-axis. Brian eaton@ncar.ucar.edu