2.3 Cleaning Raw Climate Data

  1. Exercise 2.3 - Download and extract zip folder into your preferred location
  2. Set working directory to the extracted folder in R under File - Change dir...
  3. No packages are needed for this exercise, these are base R functions
  4. Now open the script "Read_FilesScript.R" and run code directly from the script
  5. For each csv file, save as Excel Worsheet 1997-2003 if importing to NCSS or keep in csv or txt if using R.
  6. Take out all non-Jan months for every year
  7. Files will need to meets the following criteria but will be addressed in Exercise 2.4:
    Each weather station must have records for at least 10 of the 11 Januaries. Each weather station must have at least 95% of daily records for those Januaries. This means at least 325 days for 11 seasons and 295 days for 10 seasons.

    Snow Depth (SNWD) 66 stations
    Maximum temp (TMAX) 69 stations
    Minimum temp (TMIN) 68 stations

  8. The code that follows should have all files in the same folder but not the R script or any R files or code will not run. The code below brings in each text file and summarizes the data for each weather station as instructed in the code.

    #Vector of files names in working directory
    files <- list.files(pattern = ".txt")

    #Total number of files in working directory (for loop below)
    n.files <- length(files)

    #Container to hold text files
    files.list <- list()

    #Populate the container files.list with weather data sets
    files.list <- lapply(files, read.table, header =T, sep="\t")

    #Set up matrix for weather station summary data
    m1 <- matrix(NA,ncol=8,nrow=n.files)

    #Loop for running through all weather station files
    for(i in 1:n.files){

    #Assign elevation
    m1[i,1] <- files.list[[i]][1,10]

    #Assign Lat
    m1[i,2] <- files.list[[i]][1,11]

    #Assign Long
    m1[i,3] <- files.list[[i]][1,12]

    #Calculate mean snow depth
    SNWD_mm <- mean(files.list[[i]][,7],na.rm=T)

    #Convert snow depth mean to inches
    SNWD_in <- SNWD_mm/25.4

    #Assign snow depth
    m1[i,4] <- SNWD_in

    #Calculate mean maximum temp
    TMAX_C <- mean(files.list[[i]][,8],na.rm=T)

    #Convert max temp to F
    TMAX_F <- TMAX_C*0.18 + 32

    #Assign max temp
    m1[i,5] <- TMAX_F

    #Calculate mean minimum temp
    TMIN_C <- mean(files.list[[i]][,9],na.rm=T)

    #Convert min temp to F
    TMIN_F <- TMIN_C*0.18 + 32

    #Assign min temp
    m1[i,6] <- TMIN_F

    #Reassign GHCN number
    GHCN <- toString(files.list[[i]][1,1])

    #Assign Station Name
    m1[i,7] <- GHCN

    #Reassign Station Name
    SN <- toString(files.list[[i]][1,2])

    #Assign Station Name
    m1[i,8] <- SN
    }

    colnames(m1) <- c("Elevation","Lat","Long","SNWD","TMAX","TMIN","Station")
    write.csv(m1,paste(".","\\output.csv",sep=""))

    #Removes quotes from output table below
    m1 <-noquote(m1)

    #Results of code that summarizes the 6 weather stations
    m1
Col 1ElevationLatLongSNWDTMAXTMINGHVNStation
[1,] 520 42.249 -77.758 15.558 31.969 13.299 USC00300085 ALFRED
[2,] 457.2 42.1 -78.749 7.698 30.175 14.466 USC00300093 ALLEGANYSP
[3,] 452 42.303 -78.018 5.293 30.872 11.687 USC00300183 ANGELICA
[4,] 341.4 42.348 -77.347 4.122 32.247 13.549 USC00300448 BATH
[5,] 80.2 40.833 -75.083 NaN 36.457 19.621 USC00280734 BELVIDERE

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