Spatial data on several climate variables, extracted from Climatology Lab’s TerraClimate. The table below shows all possible variables to be extracted, which are chosen through the “dataset” parameter. Data ranges from 1958 to 2020.

Dataset Code Description Units
max_temperature tmax Maximum 2-m Temperature degC
min_temperature tmin Minimum 2-m Temperature degC
wind_speed ws Wind Speed at 10-m m/s
vapor_pressure_deficit vpd Vapor Pressure Deficit kPa
vapor_pressure vap 2-m Vapor Pressure kPa
snow_water_equivalent swe Snow Water Equivalent at End of Month mm
shortwave_radiation_flux srad Downward Shortwave Radiation Flux at the Surface W/m^2
soil_moisture soil Soil Moisture at End of Month mm
runoff q Runoff mm
precipitation ppt Accumulated Precipitation mm
potential_evaporation pet Reference Evapotranspiration mm
climatic_water_deficit def Climatic Water Deficit mm
water_evaporation aet Actual Evapotranspiration mm
palmer_drought_severity_index PDSI Palmer Drought Severity Index unitless

Netcdf files are downloaded from the THREDDS web server, as recommended for rectangular subsets of the global data.


Options:

  1. dataset: picks the variable to be read. Possible options are shown in the table above.

  2. raw_data: there are two options:

    • TRUE: if you want the data as it is originally.
    • FALSE: if you want the treated version of the data.
  3. time_period: picks the years for which the data will be downloaded

  4. language: you can choose between Portuguese ("pt") and English ("eng")

  5. legal_amazon_only: if set to TRUE, only downloads data from the Legal Amazon region


Examples:

# Downloading maximum temperature data from 2000 to 2001
max_temp <- load_climate(dataset = "max_temperature", time_period = 2000:2001)

# Downloading precipitation data only for the legal Amazon in 2010
amz_precipitation <- load_climate(dataset = "precipitation",
                                  time_period = 2010,
                                  legal_amazon_only = TRUE)