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GSODR

ANALYTICS
Velocity0.0

Data Access Client for Global Surface Summary of the Day (GSOD) Weather Written in R

github.com/ropensci/GSODR ↗

A weather-station data client that broke one return type to hand back distances instead of bare IDs.

ropensciweather-datar-packagenoaadata-tablebreaking-changes
◆Current state
GSODR fetches and tidies NOAA Global Surface Summary of the Day weather data for R. The 4.0.0 release made nearest_stations() return a data.table of full station metadata plus distance in kilometres rather than a character vector of station IDs, with a documented one-liner for anyone who only wanted the IDs. Nothing has shipped since March 2024.
◆Where it's heading
The package is mature and its releases read as upkeep: refreshing the internal ISD history database, dropping dependencies in favour of base and curl, and hardening the download path against station-year combinations that do not exist. The 4.0.0 change fits the same pattern of returning more structure by default rather than making callers query twice.
◆Prediction
The most likely next release is another internal station-history refresh; there is no signal of new data sources or analysis features in these entries.

◆Recent moves

  1. 2y ago

    nearest_stations() returns metadata and distances

    A breaking change with a clear upgrade path: nearest_stations() now hands back a data.table of station metadata and distance in kilometres instead of a character vector, and the notes show how to recover the old output by pulling the STNID column. Callers get distance without a second lookup.

    View source ↗
  2. 2y ago

    Station history refresh and internal tidying

    An internal ISD history database update, a switch to roxyglobals for global values, and vignette and badge cleanup. Routine upkeep between substantive releases.

    View source ↗
  3. 2y ago

    Bad station-year requests warn instead of failing the batch

    Requesting a vector of stations no longer fails wholesale on an invalid station-year combination — each bad combination warns and the valid stations still download. Duplicated elevation columns are fixed and httr drops out of Imports in favour of curl.

    View source ↗