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rnoaa (version 0.8.4)

rnoaa-package: rnoaa

Description

rnoaa is an R interface to NOAA climate data.

Arguments

Data Sources

Many functions in this package interact with the National Climatic Data Center application programming interface (API) at https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/webservices/v2, all of which functions start with ncdc_. An access token, or API key, is required to use all the ncdc_ functions. The key is required by NOAA, not us. Go to the link given above to get an API key.

More NOAA data sources are being added through time. Data sources and their function prefixes are:

  • buoy_* - NOAA Buoy data from the National Buoy Data Center

  • gefs_* - GEFS forecast ensemble data

  • ghcnd_*/meteo_* - GHCND daily data from NOAA

  • isd_* - ISD/ISH data from NOAA

  • homr_* - Historical Observing Metadata Repository (HOMR) vignette

  • ncdc_* - NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) vignette (examples)

  • seaice - Sea ice vignette

  • storm_ - Storms (IBTrACS) vignette

  • swdi - Severe Weather Data Inventory (SWDI) vignette

  • tornadoes - From the NOAA Storm Prediction Center

  • argo_* - Argo buoys

  • coops_search - NOAA CO-OPS - tides and currents data

  • cpc_prcp - rainfall data from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC)

  • arc2 - rainfall data from Africa Rainfall Climatology version 2

  • bsw - Blended sea winds (BSW)

  • ersst - NOAA Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) data

  • lcd - Local Climitalogical Data from NOAA

Where data comes from and government shutdowns

Government shutdowns can greatly affect data sources in this package. The following is a breakdown of the functions that fetch data by HTTP vs. FTP - done this way as we've noticed that during the ealry 2019 border wall shutdown most FTP services were up, while those that were down were HTTP; though not all HTTP services were down.

  • HTTP info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol

  • FTP info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Transfer_Protocol

HTTP services (whether service is/was up or down during early 2019 shutdown)

  • buoy_* - Up

  • gefs_* - Up

  • homr_* - Up

  • ncdc_* - Down

  • swdi - Down

  • tornadoes - Down

  • argo_* - Up (all HTTP except two fxns, see also FTP below)

  • coops_search - Up

  • ersst - Down

  • lcd - Down

  • se_* - Down

FTP services (whether service is/was up or down during early 2019 shutdown)

  • ghcnd_* - Up

  • isd_* - Up

  • seaice - Up

  • storm_ - Up

  • argo_* - Up (only two fxns: argo() and argo_buoy_files())

  • cpc_prcp - Up

  • arc2 - Up

  • bsw - Up

We've tried to whenever possible detect whether a service is error due to a government shutdown and give a message saying so. If you know a service is down that rnoaa interacts with but we don't fail well during a shutdown let us know.

A note about NCDF data

Functions to work with buoy data use netcdf files. You'll need the ncdf4 package for those functions, and those only. ncdf4 is in Suggests in this package, meaning you only need ncdf4 if you are using the buoy functions. You'll get an informative error telling you to install ncdf4 if you don't have it and you try to use the buoy functions.

The <code>meteo</code> family of functions

The meteo family of functions are prefixed with meteo_ and provide a set of helper functions to:

  • Identify candidate stations from a latitude/longitude pair

  • Retrieve complete data for one or more stations (meteo_coverage())