Processing METAR Weather Reports

Allows to download current and historical METAR weather reports extract and parse basic parameters and present main weather information. Current reports are downloaded from Aviation Weather Center < https://aviationweather.gov/data/metar/> and historical reports from Iowa Environmental Mesonet web page of Iowa State University ASOS-AWOS-METAR < http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/AWOS/>.

pmetar

Package allows to download current and historical METAR weather reports and decode basic parameters.

METAR weather reports source web pages

The main functions scrap data from the below web pages:

1. For current reports, the function metar_get:

• Aviation Weather Center https://aviationweather.gov/data/metar/

1. For historical reports, the function metar_get_historical:

• Iowa Environmental Mesonet web page of Iowa State University ASOS-AWOS-METAR http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/AWOS/
• Weather Information Service http://www.ogimet.com/ developed by Guillermo Ballester Valor

Please take into consideration that the http://www.ogimet.com/ can block too frequent requests for data due to the server overload.

Locations of METAR stations

Information about the locations of the METAR stations / ariports were taken from two sources:

1. The first choice is the file from https://ourairports.com/data/ created by David Megginson.
2. If information can’t be found, the second source is searched, the ADDS Station Table prepared by Greg Thompson NCAR/RAP. The file is available on the web page of Aviation Weather Center https://weather.ral.ucar.edu/surface/stations.txt from NOAA National Weather Service https://www.weather.gov/

The both above data sources are in the public domain.

Package pmetar is for extracting and parsing information, from current or historical METAR reports, only.

Don’t use it for flight planning or navigation!

Installation

CRAN version

install.packages("pmetar")

Get the development version from github:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("prcwiek/pmetar", ref = "develop")

library('pmetar')

Contributors

• David Megginson, Author of data set with airports list https://ourairports.com/data/
• Greg Thompson, Author of data set with airports list https://weather.ral.ucar.edu/surface/stations.txt