Python matplotlib colorbar scientific notation base

A possible solution can be to subclass the ScalarFormatter and fix the order of magnitude as in this question: Set scientific notation with fixed exponent and significant digits for multiple subplots

You would then call this formatter with the order of magnitude as the argument order, OOMFormatter(-2, mathText=False). mathText is set to false to obtain the notation from the question, i.e. enter image description here while setting it to True, would give enter image description here.

You can then set the formatter to the colorbar via the colorbar's format argument.

import numpy as np; np.random.seed(0)
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.ticker

class OOMFormatter(matplotlib.ticker.ScalarFormatter):
    def __init__(self, order=0, fformat="%1.1f", offset=True, mathText=True):
        self.oom = order
        self.fformat = fformat
        matplotlib.ticker.ScalarFormatter.__init__(self,useOffset=offset,useMathText=mathText)
    def _set_order_of_magnitude(self):
        self.orderOfMagnitude = self.oom
    def _set_format(self, vmin=None, vmax=None):
        self.format = self.fformat
        if self._useMathText:
             self.format = r'$\mathdefault{%s}$' % self.format


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

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
plot = ax.contourf(z)
cbar = fig.colorbar(plot, format=OOMFormatter(-2, mathText=False))

plt.show()

enter image description here

For matplotlib versions < 3.1 the class needs to look like this:

class OOMFormatter(matplotlib.ticker.ScalarFormatter):
    def __init__(self, order=0, fformat="%1.1f", offset=True, mathText=True):
        self.oom = order
        self.fformat = fformat
        matplotlib.ticker.ScalarFormatter.__init__(self,useOffset=offset,useMathText=mathText)
    def _set_orderOfMagnitude(self, nothing):
        self.orderOfMagnitude = self.oom
    def _set_format(self, vmin, vmax):
        self.format = self.fformat
        if self._useMathText:
            self.format = '$%s$' % matplotlib.ticker._mathdefault(self.format)