How to change the color palette of a plot using R and par() command?

Question

I'm using the glmtools library for my master thesis, however, the default color palette is not aesthetically pleasing. There is not an argument about the color palette in the glmtools::plot_temp help, only says that other arguments are passed to par() . I've tried without success to change the palette. Any help?

To install glmtools

1. Install devtools
2. Load devtools
3. Run devtools::install_github("GLEON/GLMr")
4. Run devtools::install_github("USGS-R/glmtools")
5. Load library(glmtools)

The default example is:

sim_folder <- run_example_sim(verbose = FALSE)
nc_file <- file.path(sim_folder, 'output.nc')
plot_temp(file = nc_file, fig_path = FALSE)
plot_temp(file = nc_file, fig_path = 'test_figure.png', height = 3, reference = 'surface')

And the horrible result is:

I'd like to use the palette terrain.colors or heat.colors

Answer 1

With glmtools , we had some internal functionality to pass through alternative palettes, but didn't have it exposed in the plot functions yet. Check out the latest version on github (0.14.8) . From plot_var , which you can use to plot temperature, you can pass in your own palette function. This should work with any variable you are plotting in heatmap form through glmtools package.