Python matplotlib colorbar scientific notation base

Question

I am trying to customise a colorbar on my matpllotlib contourf plots. Whilst I am able to use scientific notation I am trying to change the base of the notation - essentiall

Answer 1

Similar to what @ImportanceOfBeingErnes described, you could use a FuncFormatter (docs) to which you just pass a function to determine the tick labels. This removes the auto generation of the 1e-2 header for your colorbar, but I imagine you can manually add that back in (I had trouble doing it, though was able to add it on the side). Using a FuncFormatter, you can just generate string tick values which has the advantage of not having to accept the way python thinks a number should be displayed.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.ticker as tk

z = (np.random.random((10,10)) - 0.5) * 0.2

levels = list(np.linspace(-.1,.1,9))

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
plot = ax.contourf(z, levels=levels)

def my_func(x, pos):
    label = levels[pos]
    return str(label*100)

fmt1 = tk.FuncFormatter(my_func)

cbar = fig.colorbar(plot, format=fmt1)
cbar.set_label("1e-2")

plt.show()

This will generate a plot which looks like this.