NOAA_allStations {FluMoDL}

Get list of weather stations from NOAA

Description

Download the list of all available weather stations from NOAA, or only those for a specific country and period

Usage

NOAA_allStations(force_retrieve = FALSE)

NOAA_countryStations(fips, from = NULL, to = NULL)

Arguments

force_retrieve

If TRUE download the list again from NOAA (even if it was already downloaded previously). Defaults to FALSE, so that download happens only once per session.

fips

2-letter country FIPS ID (full list of codes at ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/gsod/country-list.txt).

from

Lower limit of reporting period (as class Date). Only retrieve stations whose period of record ends at or after this date.

to

Upper limit of reporting period (as class Date). Only retrieve stations whose period of record begins at or before this date.

Details

NOAA_allStations() downloads the list of all available weather stations from NOAA, found in ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/noaa/isd-history.csv, and returns it as a data.frame. The data are downloaded only once per R session, the first time this function is used, and are then stored internally for further retrievals.

NOAA_countryStations() retrieves the list for a specific country only (or several countries, if length(ctry)>1), and possibly only for a specific period of record.

Value

A data.frame with the following columns (copy-pasted from NOAA):

usaf

Air Force station ID. May contain a letter in the first position.

wban

NCDC WBAN number

ctry

FIPS country ID

st

State for US stations

icao

ICAO ID

lat

Latitude in thousandths of decimal degrees

lon

Longitude in thousandths of decimal degrees

elev.m.

Elevation in meters

begin

Beginning Period Of Record. There may be reporting gaps within the P.O.R.

end

Ending Period Of Record. There may be reporting gaps within the P.O.R.

Note that columns begin and end in the output are of class Date.