Download climate normals from Environment and Climate Change Canada

Downloads climate normals from Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) for one or more stations (defined by climate_ids). For details and units, see the glossary_normals data frame or the glossary_normals vignette: vignette("glossary_normals", package = "weathercan")

Usage

normals_dl(
  climate_ids,
  normals_years = "1981-2010",
  format = TRUE,
  stn = NULL,
  verbose = FALSE,
  quiet = FALSE
)

Arguments

climate_ids

Character. A vector containing the Climate ID(s) of the station(s) you wish to download data from. See the stations data frame or the stations_search function to find Climate IDs.

normals_years

Character. The year range for which you want climate normals. Default "1981-2010". One of "1971-2000", "1981-2010", "1991-2020". Note: Some "1991-2020" are available online, but are not yet downloadable via weathercan.

format

Logical. If TRUE (default) formats measurements to numeric and date accordingly. Unlike weather_dl(), normals_dl() will always format column headings as normals data from ECCC cannot be directly made into a data frame without doing so.

stn

DEFUNCT. Now use stations_dl() to update internal data and stations_meta() to check the date it was last updated.

verbose

Logical. Include progress messages

quiet

Logical. Suppress all messages (including messages regarding missing data, etc.)

Value

tibble with nested normals and first/last frost data

Details

Climate normals from ECCC include two types of data, averages by month for a variety of measurements as well as data relating to the frost-free period. Because these two data sources are quite different, we return them as nested data so the user can extract them as they wish. See examples for how to use the unnest() function from the tidyr package to extract the two different datasets.

The data also returns a column called meets_wmo this reflects whether or not the climate normals for this station met the WMO standards for temperature and precipitation (i.e. both have code >= A). Each measurement column has a corresponding _code column which reflects the data quality of that measurement (see the 1991-2020, 1981-2010, or 1971-2000 for more details) ECCC calculation documents.

Climate normals are downloaded from the url stored in option weathercan.urls.normals. To change this location use: options(weathercan.urls.normals = "your_new_url").

Examples

if (FALSE) { # check_eccc()

# Find the climate_id
stations_search("Brandon A", normals_years = "current")

# Download climate normals 1981-2010
n <- normals_dl(climate_ids = "5010480")
n

# Pull out last frost data *with* station information
library(tidyr)
f <- unnest(n, frost)
f

# Pull out normals *with* station information
nm <- unnest(n, normals)
nm

# Download climate normals 1971-2000
n <- normals_dl(climate_ids = "5010480", normals_years = "1971-2000")
n

# Note that some do not have last frost dates
n$frost

# Download multiple stations for 1981-2010,
n <- normals_dl(climate_ids = c("301C3D4", "301FFNJ", "301N49A"))
unnest(n, frost)


# Note, putting both normals and frost data into the same data set can be done but makes for
# a very unweildly dataset (there is lots of repetition)
nm <- unnest(n, normals) |>
  unnest(frost)
}