argoFloats: A Package for Processing Argo Float Profiles

In argoFloats: Analysis of Oceanographic Argo Floats

A Package for Processing Argo Float Profiles

Description

The argoFloats package provides tools for downloading and processing Argo profile data. It allows users to focus on core, biogeochemical ("BGC"), or deep Argo profiles, and also to sift these profiles based on ID, time, geography, variable, institution, and ocean, etc. Once downloaded, such datasets can be analyzed within argoFloats or using other R tools and packages.

Details

The development website is https://github.com/ArgoCanada/argoFloats, and https://argocanada.github.io/argoFloats/index.html provides a simpler view that may be more helpful to most users. For more on the argoFloats package, see Kelley et al. (2021).

The sketch given below illustrates the typical workflow with the package, with descriptions of the steps on the left, and names of the relevant functions on the right.

As illustrated, the central functions are named getIndex(), subset(), getProfiles(), and readProfiles(), and so a good way to get familiar with the package is to read their documentation entries and try the examples provided therein. Some built-in datasets are provided for concreteness of illustration and for testing, but actual work always starts with a call to getIndex() to download a full index of float data.

In addition to these functions, argoFloats also provides specialized versions of R "generic" functions, as follows.

1. [[ provides a way to extract items from argoFloats objects, without getting lost in the details of storage. See [[,argoFloats-method for details. (Note that ⁠[[<-⁠ is not specialized, since the user is highly discouraged from altering values within argoFloats objects.)

2. plot() provides simple ways to plot aspects of argoFloats objects. See plot,argoFloats-method() for details.

3. summary() displays key features of argoFloats objects. See summary,argoFloats-method() for details.

4. show() provides a one-line sketch of argoFloats objects. See show,argoFloats-method() for details.

5. merge() combines multiple index objects into a new index object.

It should be noted that the profile elements within argoFloats objects are stored as in the form of argo objects as defined by the oce package. This means that argoFloats users can rely on a wide variety of oce functions to analyze their data. The full suite of R tools is also available, and the vastness of that suite explains why argoFloats is written in R.

Kelley, D. E., Harbin, J., & Richards, C. (2021). argoFloats: An R package for analyzing Argo data. Frontiers in Marine Science, (8), 636922. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.3389/fmars.2021.635922")}

Author(s)

Maintainer: Dan Kelley [e-mail] (ORCID) [copyright holder]

Authors:

• Jaimie Harbin [e-mail] (ORCID)

Other contributors:

• Dewey Dunnington [e-mail] (ORCID) [contributor]

• Clark Richards [e-mail] (ORCID) [contributor]

See Also

Useful links:

• https://github.com/ArgoCanada/argoFloats

• Report bugs at https://github.com/ArgoCanada/argoFloats/issues

argoFloats documentation built on Oct. 18, 2023, 1:06 a.m.