Climate diagrams are useful tools which provide a visual summary of average climate conditions for a place over a specified period of time. This guide will explain the different parts of a Walter and Lieth climate diagram, and show you how to create one in R using the "climatol" package. This package provides a really quick and easy way to make good-looking Walter and Lieth climate diagrams. But, this guide will also show you how to create one from scratch (no packages needed!).
In my previous guide, I showed you how to download and extract precipitation and temperature climate data from CRU datasets. Now that you have the raw data - i'll guide you through some of the ways in which you can work with, and manipulate this data.
From grouping your sample sites, to calculating annual data or seasonal data, to defining a climate period and then calculating changes to conditions since this period to observe climate change trends. I'll also show you how to plot the data to create climate graphs for your sites.
Have you ever needed weather information or climate data for a project you are working on, such as a dissertation or thesis? Depending on which part of the world you need data for, sometimes it can prove very difficult to obtain good reliable climate datasets. While some agencies make weather station data freely accessible e.g. NOAA, others may restrict access. You might also want to look at climate data on large or global scales, where obtaining data from individual agencies can become more complex.
Luckily, there are several global climate datasets available, which have done all the hard work of collating and processing the climate data into an easily accessible and consistent format.
In part one of this guide, I will show you how to obtain climate data from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) and extract only the data you need for your project using R. In part two of this guide (coming soon!), I will show you how you can manipulate this data, while part three will show you how to extract climate data from WorldClim datasets.