how to limit datetime in x axis

Question

Hello folks, I am trying to plot three variables in a single XY plot. I am having a problem setting the x-axis limit which is for time. I tried setting limits using x_limit but getting error. I will provide the code I am using and also the fig I got. If anyone can help me in this regard it will be much appreciated.

   import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
   from   netCDF4 import *
   import netCDF4
   import numpy as np
   from datetime import datetime
   import pandas as pd
   import matplotlib.dates as mdates
   myFmt = mdates.DateFormatter('%b %d')
   df = pd.read_excel('SUCS_1982_2020.xlsx',sheet_name='TEST')
   time = df.Date
   temp = df.air_tmp
   prs = df.Pressure
   fig = plt.figure(figsize=(8,4))
   ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
   ax.set_facecolor("#f1f1f1")
   #ax = plt.axes([1, 1, 0.7, 0.7])
   lns1 =ax.plot(time, sst,'-' "r",label='SST')
   lns2 =ax.plot(time, temp,'-' "g",label='AIR')
   ax2 = ax.twinx() 
   lns3 =ax2.plot(time, prs,'-' "b",label='PRESSURE')
   ax.set_ylim(26,29)
   ax2.set_ylim(920,1010)
   legend=fig.legend(loc ="upper right",bbox_to_anchor= 
                       (.21,.8),bbox_transform=ax.transAxes,frameon=False)
   legend.get_frame().set_facecolor('none')
   ##########################################
   import matplotlib.dates as mdates
   myFmt = mdates.DateFormatter('%b %d')  
   ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(mdates.DayLocator(interval=1))
   ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(myFmt)
   #plt.grid(True)
   ax.grid()
   ax.set_xlabel("DAY")
   ax.set_ylabel(r"SST/AIR TEMPERATURE($^\circ$C)")
   ax2.set_ylabel("PRESSURE(hpa)")
   #ax.set_xlim(0,37)   

Answer 1

I've had a similar problem to putting in x limits to date time data. To combat this, I normally extract the subset of the data which fall in the limits you want to review in further detail.

To do this, you can do something like this:

df_subset = df[(df["Date"] < end_date) & (df["Date"] > start_end)]

And then plot this subset.