How do you get a global average at each time step so they can be summed?

I have a 4D array of emissions. I want the average emissions at each time step so that I can then sum all of these averages and determine the total emissions by a certain year (in this case the entire file).

I think that I need to use a loop but am not sure how. I am currently using this: mean_time=sum(squeeze(mean(mean(mean(total,1),2),3))); as time is the 4th dimension.

[Ameer Hamza]

What do you think is wrong with this, it is better to use vectorized code instead of using for loop. Also the above is equivalent to

mean_time = sum(mean(mean(mean(total))));

[Nesha Wright]

The only problem I was seeing was that I couldn't get a specific time from this which I think is just throwing my logic off. For example, if I wanted timestep 5 rather than the sum of the entire thing.

Answer 1

[Ameer Hamza]

If you want to average at each time step as by omitting the sum() function. For example

averageTimeSteps = mean(mean(mean(total)));

if total is a 4D matrix, the above command will produce a 1D vector. You can access element just as a regular vector e.g. averageTimeSteps(1), averageTimeSteps(2), ... etc. However, the result is still a 4D matrix so display might be a bit confusing. To simplify the display, try

averageTimeSteps = squeeze(mean(mean(mean(total))));