rnoaa is an R interface to NOAA climate data.
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 Centerghcnd_*
/meteo_*
- GHCND daily data from NOAAisd_*
- ISD/ISH data from NOAAhomr_*
- Historical Observing Metadata Repository (HOMR) vignettencdc_*
- NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) vignette (examples)sea_ice
- Sea ice vignettestorm_
- Storms (IBTrACS) vignetteswdi
- Severe Weather Data Inventory (SWDI) vignettetornadoes
- From the NOAA Storm Prediction Centercoops_search
- NOAA CO-OPS - tides and currents datacpc_prcp
- rainfall data from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC)arc2
- rainfall data from Africa Rainfall Climatology version 2bsw
- Blended sea winds (BSW)ersst
- NOAA Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) datalcd
- 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_*
- Uphomr_*
- Upncdc_*
- Downswdi
- Downtornadoes
- Downcoops_search
- Upersst
- Downlcd
- Downse_*
- Down
FTP services (whether service is/was up or down during early 2019 shutdown)
ghcnd_*
- Upisd_*
- Upsea_ice
- Upstorm_
- Upcpc_prcp
- Uparc2
- Upbsw
- 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
Some functions use netcdf files, including:
ersst
buoy
bsw
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 any of the functions listed above. You'll get
an informative error telling you to install ncdf4
if you don't have
it and you try to use the those functions. Installation of ncdf4
should be straightforward on any system.
The meteo
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()
)