ghcn

The ghcn package provides a streamlined interface for accessing and analyzing Global Historical Climatology Network - Daily (GHCN-D) data hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). By leveraging the AWS-hosted GHCN-D dataset, this package enables researchers and data scientists to quickly access vast amounts of historical climate data without worrying about API rate limits or complex query constructions. Whether you’re conducting large-scale climate studies, analyzing local weather patterns, or integrating climate data into broader research projects, ghcn provides a user-friendly and efficient toolset for exploring and utilizing GHCN-D data.

Installation

pak

You can install the development version of ghcn from GitHub with:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("joshbrinks/ghcn")

Cloning the repository

If you want to clone the repository and install the package locally, follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/ghcn.git
   

2. Open R or RStudio and set your working directory to the cloned repository:

   setwd("path/to/ghcn")

3. Install the package:

   devtools::install()

Development version

To install the development version of the package, you can use:

remotes::install_github("yourusername/ghcn@develop")

This will install the latest version from the develop branch.

After installation, you can load the package using:

library(ghcn)

Example

Here’s a quick example of how to use the main functions in the ghcn package:

library(ghcn)

# Find weather stations near New York City
nyc_stations <- find_stations_aws(lat = 40.7128, lon = -74.0060, radius = 50)

# Get inventory for the first station
inventory <- get_inventory_aws(nyc_stations$id[1])

# Fetch temperature data for 2022
data <- get_data_aws(
  station_id = nyc_stations$id[1],
  start_date = "2022-01-01",
  end_date = "2022-12-31",
  variables = c("TMAX", "TMIN")
)

# Basic plot of the data
plot(data$DATE, data$TMAX, type = "l", col = "red", 
     xlab = "Date", ylab = "Temperature (tenths of °C)")
lines(data$DATE, data$TMIN, col = "blue")
legend("topright", legend = c("TMAX", "TMIN"), col = c("red", "blue"), lty = 1)

For more detailed examples and usage, please refer to the package vignettes.