ClimIndVis: ClimIndVis

In Climandes/ClimIndVis: Calculation, verification and visualisation of climate indices

Description

Functions for calculation of climate indices and their trends as well as verification (for seasonal forecasts) and different wrapper functions for visualization.

Introduction

The ClimIndVis package provides a set of easy-to-use functions for the generation of climate indices products for observational, reanalysis and seasonal forecast data.
The main features of the package are:

• Calculation of indices (most ETCCDI indices (partly modified), threshold indices, consecutive threshold indices, SPI, rainy season indices)

• Calculation of trends

• Verification of seasonal forecasts

• Visualizations of results (as time series, maps, or seasonal forecast graphics)

The special feature of the package are a set of wrapper functions (called autoplot_...) which combine all of the above functionalities in one function. These are designed so that users with little R knowledge can easily produce a set of figures.

The package works with daily data, gridded data as well as station data. This could be station observations or gridded observational datasets, reanalysis datasets and seasonal forecast ensembles (gridded or interpolated to stations).
For large datasets the computational time can be quite high, an issue for which improvement is planned.

Getting started

1. generate a climindvis object from your data - this is needed for all functions of the climindvis package. For this you need to:

   • read your data into R

   • bring your data into the input format needed for the function make_object

   • use the function make_object to generate a climindvis object

   The package contains some example data (example_data) with more information about the needed data format and some example climindvis-objects of the same data for the use the package functions (example_climindvis_objects).
   

2. calculate indices or use one of the autoplot functions:

   • calculate indices by using the function calc_index and then process the indices with your own function or in the case of seasonal forecasts use the verify_index, calc_fc_cats functions to verifiy your seasonal forecasts of indices or calculate forecast category probabilities.
     

   • use one of the autoplot functions listed below which directly generate figures. For example graphics check out the vignette "autoplot-functions" accesible through the package help main page or by the following command:
     vignette("autoplot-functions",package="ClimIndVis")

     • autoplot_ts_stations

     • autoplot_overview_stations

     • autoplot_climatology_map

     • autoplot_trend_map

     • autoplot_verification_map

     • autoplot_forecast_map

     • autoplot_forecast_stations

Outlook next version

In an updated version (planned for late 2018) several additional features are planned:

• additional plotting functions/options

• speed up of calculation time

• option to write output to file

If you notice any bugs or have general comments or suggestions concerning the package, please send an email to the authors.

Acknowledgements

The package was developed within the CLIMANDES project, a project funded by the Swiss Agency for Developement and Cooperation (SDC) and coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Climandes/ClimIndVis documentation built on Oct. 24, 2021, 10:52 a.m.