import_ghcn_stations: Import station metadata for the Global Historical Climatology...

In worldmet: Import Surface Meteorological Data from NOAA

Import station metadata for the Global Historical Climatology Network

Description

This function accesses a full list of GHCN stations available through either the GHCNh or GHCNd. As well as the station id, needed for importing measurement data, useful geographic and network metadata is also returned.

Usage

import_ghcn_stations(
  name = NULL,
  country = NULL,
  state = NULL,
  lat = NULL,
  lng = NULL,
  crs = 4326,
  n_max = 10L,
  database = c("hourly", "daily"),
  return = c("table", "sf", "map")
)

Arguments

name, country, state	String values to use to filter the metadata for specific site names, countries and states. country and state are matched exactly to codes accessed using import_ghcn_countries(). name is searched as a sub-string case insensitively.
lat, lng, n_max	Decimal latitude (lat) and longitude (lng) (or other Y/X coordinate if using a different crs). If provided, the n_max closest ISD stations to this coordinate will be returned.
crs	The coordinate reference system (CRS) of the data, passed to sf::st_crs(). By default this is EPSG:4326, the CRS associated with the commonly used latitude and longitude coordinates. Different coordinate systems can be specified using crs (e.g., crs = 27700 for the British National Grid). Note that non-lat/lng coordinate systems will be re-projected to EPSG:4326 for making comparisons with the NOAA metadata.
database	One of "hourly" or "daily", which defines whether to import stations available in the GHCNh or GHCNd. Note that there is overlap between the two, but some stations may only be available in one or the other.
return	The type of R object to import the GHCN stations as. One of the following: "table", which returns an R data.frame. "sf", which returns a spatial data.frame from the sf package. "map", which returns an interactive leaflet map.

Value

One of:

• a tibble

• an sf object

• an interactive leaflet map

Author(s)

Jack Davison

See Also

Other GHCN functions: import_ghcn_countries(), import_ghcn_daily(), import_ghcn_hourly(), import_ghcn_inventory(), import_ghcn_monthly_temp()

worldmet documentation built on Feb. 2, 2026, 5:06 p.m.