Heat Map or color map of overlapping multiple line plots

I have 300 line plots of altitude profile of temperature and would like to visualise it in such a way which it is more quantitative instead of just plotting the line plots. I found this plots below interesting which I would like to plot but not sure how to do it. I also like to plot mean, median and mode temperature as given in the sample plot. I think my plots for mode is also wrong.

Here is my current MATLAB Code. I tried to reproduce my data here.

% Generate sample data

numProfiles = 300; % Number of temperature profiles

numAltitudes = 101; % Number of altitude points (from 0km to 100km with 1km increment)

altitude = 0:1:100; % Altitude values in km

temperatures = zeros(numAltitudes, numProfiles);

% Generate temperatures with increased variation in specific altitude ranges

baseTemperature = 200 + altitude' * 3; % Base temperature profile

% Generate variations for each profile

for i = 1:numProfiles

variation = zeros(numAltitudes, 1);

% Add varying magnitudes of variation at different altitude points

for j = 1:numAltitudes

if altitude(j) < 20

variation(j) = randn * 50; % Large variation

elseif altitude(j) < 50

variation(j) = randn * 10; % Increased variation

elseif altitude(j) < 70

variation(j) = randn * 3; % Moderate variation

else

variation(j) = randn * 1; % Very small variation

end

end

temperatures(:, i) = baseTemperature + variation;

end

% Plotting

figure;

hold on;

% Compute mean, median, and mode

meanTemperature = mean(temperatures, 2);

medianTemperature = median(temperatures, 2);

modeTemperature = mode(temperatures, 2);

colors = lines(numProfiles); % Generate a color map with distinct colors

% Plot mean, median, and mode

for i = 1:numProfiles

plot(meanTemperature, altitude, 'k-', 'LineWidth', 2);

plot(medianTemperature, altitude, 'r-', 'LineWidth', 2);

plot(modeTemperature, altitude, 'b-', 'LineWidth', 2);

plot(temperatures(:, i),altitude, 'Color', colors(i, :)); % Assign distinct color to each plot

end

% Customize the plot

ylabel('Altitude (km)');

xlabel('Temperature (K)');

% Additional legends with custom line colors

legend({'Mean', 'Median', 'Mode'}); lineColors = {'k', 'r', 'b'}; lineStyles = {'-', '-', '-'};

grid on;

Answer 1

[Aditya Singh]

Hi Mark,

To my understanding you have a large dataset and want to visualize it.

If you want a comprehensive overview of the temperature variations across different profiles and altitudes, then a color plot is better. Since we have 300 profiles, the x-axis scales form 0 to 300. The data would then look like

The mean, median and mode of the data is represented in the corner.

The data can also be plotted as a scatter plot, it give more insight to the values at each point and is more readable than the line plot.

The green line is the mode, red is the meadian and the black is the mean of the data. You can refer the below code for calculating and plotting the mean, median and mode of the data.

meanTemperature = mean(temperatures, 2);
medianTemperature = median(temperatures, 2);
modeTemperature = mode(temperatures, 2);

% Calculate mean, median, and mode temperature for each altitude point
meanTemperature = mean(temperatures, 2);
medianTemperature = median(temperatures, 2);
modeTemperature = mode(temperatures, 2);

figure;
hold on;
for i = 1:numProfiles
    plot(temperatures(:, i), altitude, 'Color', rand(1,3)); % Random color for each plot
    %scatter(temperatures(:, i), altitude, 50, rand(1,3), 'filled'); 
    %uncomment the above for scatter plot
end

% Plot mean, median, and mode temperature
plot(meanTemperature, altitude, 'k-', 'LineWidth', 2);        % Mean temperature with solid line
plot(medianTemperature, altitude, 'r--', 'LineWidth', 2);     % Median temperature with dashed line
plot(modeTemperature, altitude, 'g:', 'LineWidth', 2);        % Mode temperature with dotted line

% Customize the plot
ylabel('Altitude (km)');
xlabel('Temperature (K)');
legend('Temperature Profiles', 'Mean Temperature', 'Median Temperature', 'Mode Temperature');
grid on;

On the line plot, the mean,median and mode looks like

For more information, please refer to:

Types of MATLAB Plots - MATLAB & Simulink - MathWorks India

Hope it helps!

[Mark]

Thanks @Aditya Singh. This will be of some help. Will you be able to plot something like this figure.