Get Big Climate Data from the KNMI Climate Explorer Web App
You can query global climate data from the KNMI Climate Explorer (the KNMI is the Royal Netherlands Metereological Institute) with R.
Published at DZone with permission of Kay Cichini, author and DZone MVB. (source)
Here's a little example how I retreived data for my hometown Innsbruck,
Austria and plotted annual total precipitation. You can choose station
data by pointing at a map, by setting coordinates, etc.
# get climate (precipitation) data from url:
# http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectstation.cgi?id=someone@somewhere
# station INNSBRUCK, FLUGHAFEN (11120), 47.27N, 11.35E:
ibk_dat <- read.table("http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/pa11120.dat", sep = "",
row.names = 1, col.names = 0:12)
# cut off first and last yr, due to missing data..
ibk_dat <- ibk_dat[c(-1, -50,]
# plot yearly sums:
windows(width = 15, height = 5)
plot(rowSums(ibk_dat), type = "s", ylab = "Annual Total Precipitation (mm)",
xlab = NA, col = "blue", xaxt = "n", lwd = 1.5, las = 2, cex.axis = 0.8,
main = "INNSBRUCK FLUGHAFEN, 47.27N, 11.35E, 593m, WMO station code: 11120")
axis(1, labels = rownames(ibk_dat), at = 1:nrow(ibk_dat), las = 2, cex.axis = 0.85)
abline(h = mean(rowSums(ibk_dat)), col = 1, lty = 2, lwd = 1.2)
text(1250, adj = 0, "Long-term average", cex = 0.75)
arrows(x0 = 2.5, y0 = 1220,
x1 = 2.5, y1 = 930, length = 0.05)
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