Introduction

The GSOD or Global Surface Summary of the Day (GSOD) data provided by the US National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) are a valuable source of weather data with global coverage. However, the data files are cumbersome and difficult to work with. GSODR aims to make it easy to find, transfer and format the data you need for use in analysis and provides four main functions for facilitating this:

When reformatting data either with get_GSOD() or reformat_GSOD(), all units are converted to International System of Units (SI), e.g., inches to millimetres and Fahrenheit to Celsius. File output can be saved as a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file or in a spatial GeoPackage (GPKG) file, implemented by most major GIS software, summarising each year by station, which also includes vapour pressure and relative humidity elements calculated from existing data in GSOD.

For more information see the description of the data provided by NCEI, http://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/CDO/GSOD_DESC.txt.

Retrieving and Reformatting Data in R

Plot Global Station Locations

Find Stations in Australia

GSODR provides lists of weather station locations and elevation values. Using dplyr, we can find all the stations in Australia.

library(dplyr)
data(country_list)
station_locations <- left_join(GSOD_stations, country_list,
                               by = c("CTRY" = "FIPS"))

# create data.frame for Australia only
Oz <- filter(station_locations, COUNTRY_NAME == "AUSTRALIA")
head(Oz)

#>     USAF  WBAN                  STN_NAME CTRY STATE CALL     LAT     LON
#> 1 695023 99999       HORN ISLAND   (HID)   AS  <NA> KQXC -10.583 142.300
#> 2 749430 99999        AIDELAIDE RIVER SE   AS  <NA> <NA> -13.300 131.133
#> 3 749432 99999 BATCHELOR FIELD AUSTRALIA   AS  <NA> <NA> -13.049 131.066
#> 4 749438 99999      IRON RANGE AUSTRALIA   AS  <NA> <NA> -12.700 143.300
#> 5 749439 99999  MAREEBA AS/HOEVETT FIELD   AS  <NA> <NA> -17.050 145.400
#> 6 749440 99999                 REID EAST   AS  <NA> <NA> -19.767 146.850
#>   ELEV_M    BEGIN      END        STNID ELEV_M_SRTM_90m COUNTRY_NAME iso2c
#> 1     NA 19420804 20030816 695023-99999              24    AUSTRALIA    AU
#> 2    131 19430228 19440821 749430-99999              96    AUSTRALIA    AU
#> 3    107 19421231 19430610 749432-99999              83    AUSTRALIA    AU
#> 4     18 19420917 19440930 749438-99999              63    AUSTRALIA    AU
#> 5    443 19420630 19440630 749439-99999             449    AUSTRALIA    AU
#> 6    122 19421012 19430405 749440-99999              75    AUSTRALIA    AU
#>   iso3c
#> 1   AUS
#> 2   AUS
#> 3   AUS
#> 4   AUS
#> 5   AUS
#> 6   AUS

filter(Oz, STN_NAME == "TOOWOOMBA")
#>     USAF  WBAN  STN_NAME CTRY STATE CALL     LAT     LON ELEV_M    BEGIN
#> 1 945510 99999 TOOWOOMBA   AS  <NA> <NA> -27.583 151.933    676 19561231
#>        END        STNID ELEV_M_SRTM_90m COUNTRY_NAME iso2c iso3c
#> 1 20120503 945510-99999             670    AUSTRALIA    AU   AUS

Using the get_GSOD() Function in GSODR to Download a Single Station and Year

Now that we've seen where the reporting stations are located, we can download weather data from the station Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia for 2010 by using the STNID in the station parameter of get_GSOD().

library(GSODR)
Tbar <- get_GSOD(years = 2010, station = "955510-99999")

#> Downloading the station file(s) now.

#> Finished downloading file. Parsing the station file(s) now.

head(Tbar)

Find Stations Within a Specified Distance of a Point

Using the nearest_stations() function, you can find stations closest to a given point specified by latitude and longitude in decimal degrees. This can be used to generate a vector to pass along to get_GSOD() and download the stations of interest.

There are missing stations in this query. Not all that are listed and queried actually have files on the server.

tbar_stations <-
  nearest_stations(LAT = -27.5598,
  LON = 151.9507,
  distance = 50)

  tbar <- get_GSOD(
  years = 2010,
  station = tbar_stations
  )

If you wished to drop the stations, 949999-00170 and 949999-00183 from the query, you could do this.

remove <- c("949999-00170", "949999-00183")

tbar_stations <- tbar_stations[!tbar_stations %in% remove]

tbar <- get_GSOD(years = 2010,
                 station = tbar_stations,
                 dsn = "~/")

Plot Maximum and Miniumum Temperature Values

Using the first data downloaded for a single station, 955510-99999, plot the temperature for 2010 using read_csv() from Hadley's readr package.

library(lubridate)
library(tidyr)

# Create a dataframe of just the date and temperature values that we want to
# plot
tbar_temps <- tbar[, c(13, 18, 32, 34)]

# Gather the data from wide to long
tbar_temps <- gather(tbar_temps, Measurement, gather_cols = TEMP:MIN)

ggplot(data = tbar_temps, aes(x = ymd(YEARMODA), y = value,
                              colour = Measurement)) +
  geom_line() +
  scale_color_brewer(type = "qual", na.value = "black") +
  scale_y_continuous(name = "Temperature") +
  scale_x_date(name = "Date") +
  theme_bw()

GSOD Toowoomba Temperatures

Creating Spatial Files

Because the stations provide geospatial location information, it is possible to create a spatial file. GeoPackage files are a open, standards-based, platform-independent, portable, self-describing compact format for transferring geospatial information, which handle vector files much like shapefiles do, but eliminate many of the issues that shapefiles have with field names and the number of files. The get_GSOD() function can create a GeoPackage file, which can be used with a GIS for further analysis and mapping with other spatial objects.

After getting weather stations for Australia and creating a GeoPackage file, rgdal can import the data into R and raster provides a function, getData(), to download an outline of Australia useful for plotting the station locations in this country.

get_GSOD(years = 2015, country = "Australia", dsn = "~/", filename = "AUS",
         CSV = FALSE, GPKG = TRUE)
#> trying URL 'ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/gsod/2015/gsod_2015.tar'
#> Content type 'unknown' length 106352640 bytes (101.4 MB)
#> ==================================================
#> downloaded 101.4 MB


#> Finished downloading file.

#> Parsing the indivdual station files now.


#> Finished parsing files. Writing files to disk now.

Importing the GeoPackage file can be a bit tricky. The dsn will be the full path along with the file name. The layer to be specified is “GSOD”, this is specified in the get_GSOD() function and will not change. The file name, specified in the dsn will, but the layer name will not.

library(rgdal)
#> Loading required package: sp
#> rgdal: version: 1.1-10, (SVN revision 622)
#>  Geospatial Data Abstraction Library extensions to R successfully loaded
#>  Loaded GDAL runtime: GDAL 1.11.5, released 2016/07/01
#>  Path to GDAL shared files: /usr/local/Cellar/gdal/1.11.5_1/share/gdal
#>  Loaded PROJ.4 runtime: Rel. 4.9.3, 15 August 2016, [PJ_VERSION: 493]
#>  Path to PROJ.4 shared files: (autodetected)
#>  Linking to sp version: 1.2-3 

AUS_stations <- readOGR(dsn = path.expand("~/AUS.gpkg"), layer = "GSOD")
#> OGR data source with driver: GPKG 
#> Source: "/Users/asparks/AUS-2015.gpkg", layer: "GSOD"
#> with 165168 features
#> It has 46 fields

class(AUS_stations)
#> [1] "SpatialPointsDataFrame"
#> attr(,"package")
#> [1] "sp"

Since GeoPackage files are formatted as SQLite databases you can use the existing R tools for SQLite files (J. Stachelek 2016). One easy way is using dplyr, which we've already used to filter the stations.

This option is much faster to load since it does not load the geometry.

AUS_sqlite <- tbl(src_sqlite(path.expand("~/AUS.gpkg")), "GSOD")
class(AUS_sqlite)
#> [1] "tbl_sqlite" "tbl_sql"    "tbl_lazy"   "tbl"       

print(AUS_sqlite, n = 5)
#> Source:   query [?? x 48]
#> Database: sqlite 3.8.6 [/Users/asparks/AUS-2015.gpkg]
#> 
#>     fid       geom   USAF  WBAN        STNID          STN_NAME  CTRY STATE
#>   <int>     <list>  <chr> <chr>        <chr>             <chr> <chr> <chr>
#> 1     1 <raw [29]> 941030 99999 941030-99999 BROWSE ISLAND AWS    AS -9999
#> 2     2 <raw [29]> 941030 99999 941030-99999 BROWSE ISLAND AWS    AS -9999
#> 3     3 <raw [29]> 941030 99999 941030-99999 BROWSE ISLAND AWS    AS -9999
#> 4     4 <raw [29]> 941030 99999 941030-99999 BROWSE ISLAND AWS    AS -9999
#> 5     5 <raw [29]> 941030 99999 941030-99999 BROWSE ISLAND AWS    AS -9999
#> # ... with more rows, and 40 more variables: CALL <chr>, ELEV_M <dbl>,
#> #   ELEV_M_SRTM_90m <dbl>, BEGIN <dbl>, END <dbl>, YEARMODA <chr>,
#> #   YEAR <chr>, MONTH <chr>, DAY <chr>, YDAY <dbl>, TEMP <dbl>,
#> #   TEMP_CNT <int>, DEWP <dbl>, DEWP_CNT <int>, SLP <dbl>, SLP_CNT <int>,
#> #   STP <dbl>, STP_CNT <int>, VISIB <dbl>, VISIB_CNT <int>, WDSP <dbl>,
#> #   WDSP_CNT <int>, MXSPD <dbl>, GUST <dbl>, MAX <dbl>, MAX_FLAG <chr>,
#> #   MIN <dbl>, MIN_FLAG <chr>, PRCP <dbl>, PRCP_FLAG <chr>, SNDP <dbl>,
#> #   I_FOG <int>, I_RAIN_DRIZZLE <int>, I_SNOW_ICE <int>, I_HAIL <int>,
#> #   I_THUNDER <int>, I_TORNADO_FUNNEL <int>, EA <dbl>, ES <dbl>, RH <dbl>

Reformating Local Data Files

You may have already downloaded GSOD data or may just wish to use an FTP client to download the files from the server to you local disk and not use the capabilities of get_GSOD(). In that case the reformat_GSOD() function is useful.

There are two ways, you can either provide reformat_GSOD() with a list of specified station files or you can supply it with a directory containing all of the “WBAN-WMO-YYYY.op.gz” station files that you wish to reformat.

Reformat a List of Local Files

y <- c("~/GSOD/gsod_1960/200490-99999-1960.op.gz",
       "~/GSOD/gsod_1961/200490-99999-1961.op.gz")
x <- reformat_GSOD(file_list = y)

Reformat All Local Files Found in Directory

x <- reformat_GSOD(dsn = "~/GSOD/gsod_1960")

Updating GSODR's Internal Database of Station Locations and Metadata

GSODR uses internal databases of station data from the NCEI to provide location and other metadata, e.g. elevation, station names, WMO codes, etc. to make the process of querying for weather data faster. This database is created and packaged with GSODR for distribution and is updated with new releases. Users have the option of updating these databases after installing GSODR. While this option gives the users the ability to keep the database up-to-date and gives GSODR's authors flexibility in maintaining it, this also means that reproducibility may be affected since the same version of GSODR may have different databases on different machines. If reproducibility is necessary, care should be taken to ensure that the version of the databases is the same across different machines.

The database file isd_history.rda can be located on your local system by using the following command,

paste0(.libPaths(), "/GSODR/extdata")[1]

unless you have specified another location for library installations and installed GSODR there, in which case it would still be in GSODR/extdata.

Additional Climate Data

Additional climate data, GSODRdata, formatted for use with GSOD data provided by GSODR are available as an R package installable through GitHub due to the package size, 5.1Mb, being too large for CRAN.

#install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("adamhsparks/GSODRdata")
library("GSODRdata")

Notes

Elevation Values

90 metre (90m) hole-filled SRTM digital elevation (Jarvis et al. 2008) was used to identify and correct/remove elevation errors in data for station locations between -60Ëš and 60Ëš latitude. This applies to cases here where elevation was missing in the reported values as well. In case the station reported an elevation and the DEM does not, the station reported is taken. For stations beyond -60Ëš and 60Ëš latitude, the values are station reported values in every instance. See https://github.com/ropensci/GSODR/blob/master/data-raw/fetch_isd-history.md for more detail on the correction methods.

WMO Resolution 40. NOAA Policy

Users of these data should take into account the following (from the NCEI website):

“The following data and products may have conditions placed on their international commercial use. They can be used within the U.S. or for non-commercial international activities without restriction. The non-U.S. data cannot be redistributed for commercial purposes. Re-distribution of these data by others must provide this same notification.” WMO Resolution 40. NOAA Policy

References

Stachelek, J. (2016) Using the Geopackage Format with R. URL: https://jsta.github.io/2016/07/14/geopackage-r.html

Appendices

Appendix 1: GSODR Final Data Format, Contents and Units

GSODR formatted data include the following fields and units:

Appendix 2: Map of GSOD Station Locations

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