Introduction

Weather data matters to many: Weather data is useful across many disciplines: epidemiologists use it to predict the incidence of diseases associated with rainfall (malaria) or humidity (influenza); economists monitor for its effect on things like crop yield, commodity prices, or even violence. It's a topic of daily elevator conversation and human interest.

Weather data is inaccessible to most: That's where the gsod package comes in. High quality, de-aggregated weather data exists, and is usually both collected and maintained by governments. Taxpayers shouldn't have to pay twice for the privelege of accessing it. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Global Surface Summary of the Day data, for example, go back for nearly two dozen years, and contain information such as temperature, wind, humidity, rainfall, etc. from more than 9,000 weather stations. Databrew's gsod package makes using those data easy, even for beginners.

Use the gsod package yourself

Here's the source code for the gsod package and here's the package's vignette. Enjoy!