How to define the colorbar for subplots

I have 10 subplots in a figure i want to define one colorbar for the whole figure, However the contour range is different for all the plots

% To plot the mean sea ice drift 
  left1 = 0.42;
  cb_bottom = 0.08 ;
  cb_width = 0.20 ;
  cb_height = 0.02 ;

subplot(2,5,6)
hold on;
m_proj('stereographic','lat',90,'long',300,'radius',33,'rect','on');
m_grid('linewi',1,'tickdir','out',...
        'xtick',6,'ytick',[72 78 84 90]);
m_contourf(long,lat,mdmn_wr,'linestyle','none');
m_coast('patch',[.6 .6 .6]);
xlabel('Mean of Median Winter Sea Ice Drift 1979-2014','visible','on')

% To plot the median sea ice drift 
subplot(2,5,7) 
hold on;
m_proj('stereographic','lat',90,'long',300,'radius',33,'rect','on');
m_grid('linewi',1,'tickdir','out',...
        'xtick',6,'ytick',[72 78 84 90]);
m_contourf(long,lat,mdn_wr,'linestyle','none');
m_coast('patch',[.6 .6 .6]);
xlabel('Median Winter Sea Ice Drift 1979-2014','visible','on')

% To plot the standard deviation of sea ice drift 
subplot(2,5,8)
hold on;
m_proj('stereographic','lat',90,'long',300,'radius',33,'rect','on');
m_grid('linewi',1,'tickdir','out',...
        'xtick',6,'ytick',[72 78 84 90]);
m_contourf(long,lat,std_mdn_wr,'linestyle','none');
m_coast('patch',[.6 .6 .6]);
xlabel('Standard Deviation of Median Winter Sea Ice Drift 1979-2014','visible','on')

% To plot the Skewness of sea ice drift 
subplot(2,5,9)
hold on;
m_proj('stereographic','lat',90,'long',300,'radius',33,'rect','on');
m_grid('linewi',1,'tickdir','out',...
        'xtick',6,'ytick',[72 78 84 90]);
m_contourf(long,lat,skw_mdn_wr,'linestyle','none');
m_coast('patch',[.6 .6 .6]);
xlabel('        Skewness of Median Winter Sea Ice Drift 1979-2014','visible','on')

% To plot the flatness of sea ice drift 
subplot(2,5,10)
hold on;
m_proj('stereographic','lat',90,'long',300,'radius',33,'rect','on');
m_grid('linewi',1,'tickdir','out',...
        'xtick',6,'ytick',[72 78 84 90]);
m_contourf(long,lat,kts_mdn_wr,'linestyle','none');
m_coast('patch',[.6 .6 .6]);
xlabel('   Kurtosis of Median Winter Sea Ice Drift 1979-2014','visible','on')

 h = colorbar;
 set(h,'location','southoutside',...
    'position',[left1 cb_bottom cb_width cb_height] );

[Muhammad Usman Saleem]

firstly see it

>> m_proj('stereographic','lat',90,'long',300,'radius',33,'rect','on');

Error:

Undefined function 'm_proj' for input arguments of type 'char'.

[Walter Roberson]

Muhammad Usman Saleem comments

there is error in this line of the code. Fix it

[Walter Roberson]

m_proj is from the M_map toolbox http://www.eos.ubc.ca/~rich/map.html

[Sophia]

Muhammad Usman Saleem.. You need m_map toolbox in your matlab path to make it work.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

colorbar are associated with axes, but each subplot is its own axes.

To get a colorbar spanning the whole range, it would have to be associated with an axes whose caxis property was the whole range. You might want to create an axes for this purpose. You do not need to plot anything in the axes, and it could have its box turned off, no labels, background color 'none' and so on. You just have to be careful about the positioning: any subplot() call afterwards that would overlap that axes will have the effect of deleting the axes.

[Sophia]

Hi Walter, But the question is how to define the new axes whose property has the whole range? or

how to define the axes for any of subplots written above.. e.g. the range of mdmn_wr plotted in subplot 1 is 0-10.6267.. How to define the axes for the subplot.

[Walter Roberson]

cbax = axes('visible', 'off');
caxis(cbax, [0, 10.6267]);

h = colorbar(cbax, 'location', 'southoutside',...
  'position', [left1 cb_bottom cb_width cb_height] );

[Sophia]

Error using scribe\private\colorbarv6 Too many input arguments.

   cbar = colorbarv6(varargin{:});

[Walter Roberson]

 h = colorbar('peer', cbax, 'southoutside', ...
  'position', [left1 cb_bottom cb_width cb_height] );