Scientific notation colorbar in matplotlib

Question

I am trying to put a colorbar to my image using matplotlib. The issue comes when I try to force the ticklabels to be written in scientific notation. How can I force the scie

Answer 1

There is a more straightforward (but less customizable) way to get scientific notation in a ColorBar without the %.0e formatting.

Create your ColorBar:

cbar = plt.colorbar()

And call the formatter:

cbar.formatter.set_powerlimits((0, 0))

This will make the ColorBar use scientific notation. See the example figure below to see how the ColorBar will look.