RNCEP: global weather and climate data at your fingertips

In October 2014, the format for Reanalysis I data has been changed from netCDF3 to netCDF4-classic (see http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis.html for details). This change has broken the NCEP.interp() and NCEP.gather() functions for use with the Reanalysis I data set.

More recent changes related to the access of the Reanalysis I and II data sets have necessitated a further code adjustment of the RNCEP package.

PLEASE UPDATE TO THE MOST RECENT VERSION OF RNCEP (v1.0.8),

available from CRAN or below as both source tarball and windows binary.

Introduction: RNCEP is a package of functions in the R language for statistical computing and graphics. It is intended to simplify the access, organization, and visualization of weather data from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis and NCEP/DOE reanalysis II data sets. These are two long-term high-quality data sets with global coverage of many relevant atmospheric variables. This package of functions is meant mostly for ecologists to help more easily integrate atmospheric data into ecological research. The functions in the package, however, are robust and will likely be useful in many disciplines.NOTE: RNCEP version 1.0.5 is now available here and on the CRAN repository. This version contains new functions to simulate trajectories according to different behaviors (optionally) using NCEP wind data. If you have trouble installing RNCEP, try updating to a more recent version of R.Software Note:

An introduction to the RNCEP package is available in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Kemp, M. U., Emiel van Loon, E., Shamoun-Baranes, J., Bouten, W., 2012. RNCEP: global weather and climate data at your fingertips. Methods in Ecology and Evolution (3), 65-70.

Descriptions of the flow-assistance equations, and the function NCEP.flight(), are available in the Journal of Theoretical Biology

Kemp, M. U., Shamoun-Baranes, J., van Loon, E. E., McLaren, J. D., Dokter, A. M., and Bouten, W. 2012. Quantifying flow-assistance and implications for movement research, Journal of Theoretical Biology, (308), 56-67, DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2012.05.026.

User's Manual:

The RNCEP User's manual is included in both the source and binary distributions, or may be downloaded separately.

Installation via CRAN:

Pre-compiled binaries and source code for the RNCEP package are now available at the CRAN repository. The package may be installed by entering...

install.packages("RNCEP", dependencies=TRUE)

into an R command prompt.

Binaries and Source code:

A pre-compiled binary for Windows may be downloaded below and installed in R using "Install package(s) from local zip files..." under the "Packages" tab of the R GUI interface.

We also provide the source code below for those who wish to compile themselves.

Dependencies:

Be sure that the packages upon which RNCEP depends are installed: abind, maps, fields, tgp, fossil

Each can be downloaded and installed from the CRAN repository

or by entering...

install.packages(c('abind', 'maps', 'fields', 'tgp', 'fossil'), dependencies=TRUE)

into an R command prompt.

For Unix-alike (e.g. Mac and Linux) users running R 2.8.0 or greater, loading of the RNCEP package may fail if Tcl/Tk version >= 8.4 is not installed (see section A.2.1 of R Installation and Administration). For Mac OS X users, Tcl/Tk may be obtained here.