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RNCEP: global weather and climate data at your fingertips
Author(s) -
Kemp Michael U.,
Emiel van Loon E.,
ShamounBaranes Judy,
Bouten Willem
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
methods in ecology and evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.425
H-Index - 105
ISSN - 2041-210X
DOI - 10.1111/j.2041-210x.2011.00138.x
Subject(s) - computer science , aggregate (composite) , data access , data processing , meteorology , data science , environmental science , geography , database , materials science , composite material
Summary 1. Atmospheric conditions strongly influence ecological systems, and tools that simplify the access and processing of atmospheric data can greatly facilitate ecological research. 2. We have developed RNCEP, a package of functions in the open‐source R language, to access, organise and visualise freely available atmospheric data from two long‐term high‐quality data sets with global coverage. 3. These functions retrieve data, via the Internet, for either a desired spatiotemporal extent or interpolated to a point in space and time. The package also contains functions to temporally aggregate data, producing user‐defined variables, and to visualise these data on a map. 4. By making access to atmospheric data and integration with biological data easier and more flexible, we hope to facilitate and encourage the exploration of relationships between biological systems and atmospheric conditions.