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Get Weather Station Metadata for Both DPIRD and SILO Weather Stations

Source: R/get_stations_metadata.R
get_stations_metadata.Rd

Download the latest station locations and metadata for stations in the SILO and DPIRD networks. For BOM stations that exist in SILO, but lack metadata from BOM, the rows will exist to indicate that the station is in the SILO data set, but there is no corresponding BOM metadata available.

Usage

get_stations_metadata(
  station_code = NULL,
  station_name = NULL,
  which_api = "all",
  api_key = NULL,
  include_closed = FALSE,
  rich = FALSE
)

Arguments

station_code

An optional value that should be provided as a single string value or character vector of station codes for which to return metadata. If this or station_name are not provided, all station metadata is returned by default. If this and station_name are both provided, this takes precedence and values corresponding to this input will be returned.

station_name

An optional value that should be provided as either a single string or character vector of station names for which to return metadata. Fuzzy matching is used, e.g., using c("brisbane", "melbourne") will return rows for “Brisbane”, “Brisbane Aero”, “Mt Brisbane”, “City of Melbourne Bay”, “Selbourne Kirnbrae”, “Maroondah Weir Melbourne Water”, “Melbourne Airport” and “Melbourne Botanical Gardens” station_name values. If this or station_code are not provided, all station metadata is returned by default. Using station_code will always override this argument if both are provided.

which_api

A string value that indicates which API to use. Valid values are all, for both SILO (BOM data) and DPIRD APIs; silo for only stations from the SILO API (BOM data); or dpird for stations from the DPIRD Weather 2.0 API. Defaults to all.

api_key

A character string containing your API key from DPIRD, https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/web-apis, for the DPIRD Weather 2.0 API. If left as NULL, defaults to automatically detecting your key from your local .Renviron, .Rprofile or similar. Alternatively, you may directly provide your key as a string here. If nothing is provided, you will be prompted on how to set up your R session so that it is auto-detected. Only used when which_api is DPIRD or all.

include_closed

A Boolean string indicating whether to include closed stations' metadata. Use TRUE to include these. Defaults to FALSE.

rich

A Boolean string indicating whether to return rich information about DPIRD's weather station(s), this does not affect the SILO stations' metadata, the variables for these observations will be NA. Defaults to FALSE.

Value

A data.table::data.table() of BOM weather stations' metadata for stations available from SILO and weather stations' metadata for stations available from DPIRD's Weather 2.0 API with the following columns sorted by state and station_name.

station_code:Unique station code. factor
station_name:Unique station name. character
start:Date observations start. date
end:Date observations end. date
latitude:Latitude in decimal degrees. numeric
longitude:Longitude in decimal degrees. numeric
state:State in which the station is located. character
elev_m:Station elevation in metres. numeric
source:Organisation responsible for the data or station maintenance. character
include_closed:Station include_closed, one of ‘open’ or ‘closed’. character
wmo:World Meteorological Organisation, (WMO), number if applicable. numeric
rich values
capabilities:a list of the station's capabilities (data that it records). character
probe_height:temperature probe height in metres. double
rain_gauge_heightrain gauge height in metres. double
wind_probe_heights:wind probe heights always 3 metres, although some have 10 metre probes. integer

Note

For stations in the SILO API, BOM does not report the exact date on which stations opened or closed, only the year. Therefore the start and end columns will indicate January 1 of the year that a station opened or closed, whereas stations in the DPIRD network have the date to the day. For BOM stations that are closed for the current year, this indicates that the station closed sometime during the current year prior to the request being made. NA in the current year indicates a station is still open.

There are discrepancies between the BOM's official station metadata, e.g. longitude and latitude values and SILO metadata. In these cases, the BOM metadata is used as it is considered to be the authority on the stations' locations.

The station names are returned by both APIs in full caps. For purposes of cleaner graphs and maps where these data may be sued, this function converts them to proper name formats/title case with the first letter of every word capitalised excepting words like “at” or “on” and keeps acronyms like “AWS” or “PIRSA” or state abbreviations in the station names as all caps.

References

Station location and other metadata are sourced from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) webpage, Bureau of Meteorology Site Numbers:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/cdo/about/site-num.shtml and http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/lists_by_element/stations.txt and the DPIRD Weather 2.0 API.

See also

Other DPIRD: dpird_extreme_weather_values, dpird_minute_values, dpird_summary_values, find_nearby_stations(), find_stations_in(), get_dpird_apsim(), get_dpird_availability(), get_dpird_extremes(), get_dpird_minute(), get_dpird_summaries()

Other SILO: find_nearby_stations(), find_stations_in(), get_data_drill(), get_data_drill_apsim(), get_patched_point(), get_patched_point_apsim(), silo_daily_values

Other metadata: find_forecast_towns(), find_nearby_stations(), find_stations_in(), get_available_imagery(), get_available_radar(), get_dpird_availability()

Author

Adam H. Sparks, adamhsparks@gmail.com

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# fetch metadata for all stations available in {weatherOz}
get_stations_metadata(api_key = "your_api_key")
} # }