Get monthly data for multiple climatic variables — get_monthly

Extract monthly climate data (temperature and precipitation) for a given set of points or polygons within Europe.

Usage

get_monthly_climate(
  coords = NULL,
  climatic_var = "Prcp",
  period = NULL,
  output = "df"
)

Arguments

coords: A matrix, data.frame, tibble::tbl_df, sf::sf(), or terra::SpatVector() object containing point or polygon coordinates in decimal degrees (lonlat/geographic format). Longitude must fall between -40.5 and 75.5 degrees, and latitude between 25.5 and 75.5 degrees. If coords is a matrix, it must have only two columns: the first with longitude and the second with latitude data. If coords is a data.frame or a tbl_df, it must contain at least two columns called lon and lat with longitude and latitude coordinates, respectively.
climatic_var: Character. Climatic variables to be downloaded ('Tmax', 'Tmin', 'Tavg' or 'Prcp'). Various elements can be concatenated in the vector.
period: Either numbers (representing years between 1950 and 2024), or dates in "YYYY-MM" format (to obtain data for specific months). To specify a sequence of years or months use the format 'start:end' (e.g. YYYY:YYYY or "YYYY-MM:YYYY-MM", see examples). Various elements can be concatenated in the vector (e.g. c(2000:2005, 2010:2015, 2020), c("2000-01:2000-06", "2001-01"))
output: Character. Either "df", which returns a dataframe with monthly climatic values for each point/polygon, or "raster", which returns a terra::SpatRaster() object (within a list when more than one climatic variable is downloaded).

Value

Either:

A data.frame (if output = "df")
A list of terra::SpatRaster() object (if output = "raster")

References

Pucher C. 2023. Description and Evaluation of Downscaled Daily Climate Data Version 4. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22962671.v1

Werner Rammer, Christoph Pucher, Mathias Neumann. 2018. Description, Evaluation and Validation of Downscaled Daily Climate Data Version 2. ftp://palantir.boku.ac.at/Public/ClimateData/

Adam Moreno, Hubert Hasenauer. 2016. Spatial downscaling of European climate data. International Journal of Climatology 36: 1444–1458.

Author

Veronica Cruz-Alonso, Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez

Examples

if (FALSE) { # interactive()

# Coords as matrix
coords <- matrix(c(-5.36, 37.40), ncol = 2)
ex <- get_monthly_climate(coords, period = "2001-01")  # single month
ex <- get_monthly_climate(coords, period = c("2001-01", "2001-03"))  # January AND March 2001
ex <- get_monthly_climate(coords, period = "2001-01:2001-03")  # January TO March 2001
ex <- get_monthly_climate(coords, period = 2008)  # entire year
ex <- get_monthly_climate(coords, period = c(2008, 2010))  # 2008 AND 2010
ex <- get_monthly_climate(coords, period = 2008:2010)  # 2008 TO 2010

ex <- get_monthly_climate(coords, period = "2001-01", climatic_var = "Tmin")

# Coords as data.frame or tbl_df
coords <- as.data.frame(coords) #coords <- tibble::as_tibble(coords)
names(coords) <- c("lon", "lat")  # must have these columns
ex <- get_monthly_climate(coords, period = "2001-01")  # single month

# Coords as sf
coords <- sf::st_as_sf(coords, coords = c("lon", "lat"))
ex <- get_monthly_climate(coords, period = "2001-01")  # single month

# Several points
coords <- matrix(c(-5.36, 37.40, -4.05, 38.10), ncol = 2, byrow = TRUE)
ex <- get_monthly_climate(coords, period = "2001-01", output = "raster")  # raster output

# Multiple climatic variables
coords <- matrix(c(-5.36, 37.40), ncol = 2)
ex <- get_monthly_climate(coords, climatic_var = c("Tmin", "Tmax"), period = "2001-01")

## Polygons
coords <- terra::vect("POLYGON ((-5 38, -5 37.5, -4.5 37.5, -4.5 38, -5 38))")

# Return raster
ex <- get_monthly_climate(coords, period = "2001-01", output = "raster")
ex <- get_monthly_climate(coords, climatic_var = c("Tmin", "Tmax"), period = "2001-01",
output = "raster") # Multiple climatic variables

# Return dataframe for polygon
ex <- get_monthly_climate(coords, period = "2001-01")
}