The package weathercan provides a very easy way to access Canadian historical weather data from Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) website. In this vignette we show how to combine the weathercan and hydrotoolbox functionality.
You can install weathercan directly from CRAN: install.packages("weathercan"). Since this package makes it easier to search for and download multiple months/years of historical weather data, these downloads can be fairly large and performing multiple downloads may use up ECCC’s bandwidth unnecessarily. Try to stick to what you need.
Once you know your station ID, you can download it (see this link). In the next code lines we show an example.
# get station ID's
head(stations)
# search by name
stations_search("Kamloops", interval = "day")
# Kamloops A - BC province
station_id <- 1274
# because hydrotoolbox works with data frames
# we convert the tibble
kam <-
weather_dl(station_ids = station_id,
start = "1900-01-01",
end = "1950-12-31",
interval = "day") %>%
as.data.frame()
# now we create the station object adn we set the data
kamloops_hm <-
hm_create() %>%
hm_set(id = station_id,
station = kam$station_name[1],
province = kam$prov[1],
country = "Canada",
lat = kam$lat[1],
long = kam$lon[1],
alt = kam$elev[1],
tmean = kam[ , c("date", "mean_temp")],
tmax = kam[ , c("date", "max_temp")],
tmin = kam[ , c("date", "min_temp")],
precip = kam[ , c("date", "total_precip")],
rainfall = kam[ , c("date", "total_rain")]
)
kamloops_hm %>% hm_show()
# we plot air temperatures
kamloops_hm %>%
hm_plot(slot_name = c('tmean', 'tmax', 'tmin'),
col_name = list('mean_temp', 'max_temp', 'min_temp'),
interactive = TRUE,
line_color = c('forestgreen', 'red', 'dodgerblue'),
x_lab = 'Date', y_lab = 'T(ºC)',
legend_lab = c('mean', 'max', 'min') )Although this version of the hydrotoolbox package does not offer the ability to build automatically a hydro-meteorological station from ECCC database, you can save a lot of time by recycling the following function:
# before running this function, the packages
# weathercan and hydrotoolbox should be loaded
# station_number: character with station ID
build_weathercan <- function(station_id,
from, to,
time_step){
# download station data
station <-
weather_dl(station_ids = station_id,
start = from,
end = to,
interval = time_step) %>%
as.data.frame()
# now we create the station object and we set the (meta)data
station_hm <-
hm_create() %>%
hm_set(id = station_id,
station = station$station_name[1],
province = station$prov[1],
country = "Canada",
lat = station$lat[1],
long = station$lon[1],
alt = station$elev[1],
tmean = station[ , c("date", "mean_temp")],
tmax = station[ , c("date", "max_temp")],
tmin = station[ , c("date", "min_temp")],
precip = station[ , c("date", "total_precip")],
rainfall = station[ , c("date", "total_rain")]
)
return(station_hm)
}once the function is loaded in the Global Environment, we set up the station
# we construct the Kamloops station
# but in a single code line
kamloops_station <-
build_weathercan(station_id = 1274,
from = "1900-01-01",
to = "1950-12-31",
time_step = "day")
kamloops_station %>%
hm_show()Since the builder function is the only one that differs from what was developed for SNIH data, we recommend (re)visiting this vignette (vignette ('snih_arg', package = 'hydrotoolbox')) to explore some of the available methods.