1. Introduction to Python for Earth and Environmental Sciences#
In this first chapter, which you may skip if you are an experienced Python programmer, we will guide you through the basics of Python that will allow you to sail through the rest of the book. This includes the basics of variables, control flow, file I/O, data structure, functions, and classes in Python. We then introduce cornerstone Python libraries:
Numpy
for scientific computing,Matplotlib
andCartopy
for visualization,Pandas
for tabular data analysis,Geopandas
for geospatial data analysis,Scikit-learn
for statistical modeling, andSeaborn
for statistical graphics.