README.md

In bcgov/climate-disturbances: Detect extreme climate events in BC

climate-disturbances

This project identifies extreme climate events from environmental data. The current focus is on heatwave detection.

Installation and setup

This project leverages the {targets} package, a pipeline toolkit for data science projects in R. The packages used in this analysis are catalogued in the DESCRIPTION file. The project also uses the {renv} package to ensure reproducibility. To initialize the project on your machine, open the project (most easily by opening the .Rproj file in Rstudio), install the {renv} package and "restore" the project to ensure all of the necessary packages are installed (with the correct versions):

# install.packages("renv")
renv::restore()

Usage

Run targets::tar_make() to run the project.

Heatwaves

Heatwave detection is implemented using Open Government Licence - Canada data retrieved from Environment Canada and detected using the {heatwaveR} package.

Methods:

1. Adjusted and Homogenized Canadian Climate Data is downloaded and stored in a duckdb database.
2. A digital elevation model is combined with station temperature data from 1990-2020 to create daily maximum temperature gridded surfaces for B.C. using Thin Plate Splines (via the {fields} R package), and combined as a 3-dimensional raster cube (x, y, time) of daily maximum temperatures using the {stars} R package
3. Heatwaves are detected as follows:
   1. For each pixel:
   2. Daily climate normals are generated using heatwaveR::ts2clm() and 30 years of daily maximum temperature data (1990-2020), and heatwave thresholds are calculated at the 90th percentile of the daily normal tmax.
   3. Heatwaves are detected using heatwaveR::detect_event(), with a minimum duration of 2 days, and the thresholds calculated in the previous step.
   4. Climatologies are summarized across areas of interest (selected LHAs), and heatwaves at the AOI level are detected where:
   5. the mean daily maximum of pixels in the AOI is greater than the mean 90% threshold of pixels in the LHA
   6. The 75th percentile of tmax of the pixels in the AOI is >= 30C

Outputs:

• Daily temperature summaries at the LHA level, as well as heatwave summaries are generated and stored in csv files out/heatwave_summaries
• daily gridded temperature surfaces are saved in out/data/daily_temps as .tif files

Air Quality (currently on hold)

The air quality data are sourced from the B.C. Data Catalogue, provided under the Open Government Licence—British Columbia (this file: ftp://ftp.env.gov.bc.ca/pub/outgoing/AIR/AnnualSummary/2009-LatestVerified/PM25.csv)

Using the method implemented in rcaaqs::pm_24h_caaqs(), data were aggregated to a daily average.

Floods

Water level (hydrometric) data is retrieved from the Environment & Climate Change Canada HYDAT database, provided under the Open Government Licence - Canada, using the {tidyhydat} package.

Project Status

This project is in the very early stages of design.

Getting Help or Reporting an Issue

To report bugs/issues/feature requests, please file an issue.

How to Contribute

If you would like to contribute, please see our CONTRIBUTING guidelines.

Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.

License

Copyright 2020 Province of British Columbia

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

This project was created using the bcgovr package.

bcgov/climate-disturbances documentation built on Jan. 29, 2023, 1:42 p.m.