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Changelog

climr 0.2.0

We have lots of exciting improvements in this release! Of major note, we now have: - Native raster downscaling, allowing SpatRaster elevation input, and returning a SpatRaster stack of downscaled variables at user-specified resolution - Optional in-database downscaling. This is especially useful for reducing the time required for downscaling timeseries data - An updated climr mosaic base climatology, covering the full North America domain, and using some cool generative deep-learning models for filling in missing areas - A third timeseries dataset based on MSWX/MSWEP

Breaking Changes

  • We having improved the database connection algorithm, and have removed the dbCon parameter from all input_* functions. If you supply a database connection, it will give an error.
  • Previously, climr expected the bounding box vector to be in the reverse of the standard order. We have changed this so you can now directly supply a terra::ext object.
  • Since all base climatologies now cover the full NA domain, we have removed the auto option from which_refmap. The default is now refmap_climr.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed a bug that caused failure in downloads of gcm time series.
  • Fixed a bug in the CNRM-ESM2-1 future time series

Enhancements

  • Added a new parameter db_option to downscale, with options local, database, or auto to specify where the downscaling should occur. Option auto attempts to choose the best option based on the number of points and type of query.
  • Added a new boolean parameter ensemble_mean to downscale, to optionally not return the ensemble mean of model runs.
  • Expanded the climr mosaic of 1981-2010 gridded climatologies to the full North American domain. Learn about it here.
  • Added a 1901-2024 gridded observational time series based on the multi-source weather (MSWX/MSWEP) dataset. Learn about it here
  • New function legend_ramp() for simplified legend plotting on color ramp maps, including accommodation of logarithmic scaling.
  • New function logVars() for logarithmic transformation of specified columns in any data.table.
  • Added a Known Issues section to the vignettes, including the FFP, NFFD, and PAS discrepancies with ClimateNA and a workaround for using custom refmaps.

climr 0.1.1

Bug Fixes

  • Modified the Hargreaves method for calculation of monthly solar radiation to allow for calculation of Eref and CMD above the arctic circle in a way that matches ClimateNA results.
  • Fixed an edge case in the tiling that resulted in NA values in southern Mexico if full North American extent was queried.
  • Fixed bug in caching where cache would fail due to incorrect folder name in certain cases.
  • Fixed a bug in plot_downscale() that affected colors when pal = "gcms" and labels when endlabel = "gcms"
  • Fixed a bug where climr didn’t download the correct run names for historic GCMs
  • Modified the equations for frost-free period so that they are confined to a range of 0-365.

Enhancements

  • Redesigned the database to substantially improve speed of downloading gcm ssp timeseries, especially for a small number of points.
  • Added run_nm parameter to downscale and input_gcm_* functions so users can specify desired run(s). Also added list_runs_ssp() and list_runs_historic()

Known issues

  • There are discrepancies between climr and ClimateNA in values of frost-free period (eFFP, bFFP, and FFP) and frost-free days (NFFD). For FFP see issue #297; For NFFD see issue #295. We will attempt to resolve these differences in a future version.

climr 0.1.0

Implementation of naming conventions

  • We overhauled the naming of functions, parameters, and options to make them more intuitive and internally consistent. You will need to revise the climr code in your workflows to accommodate these changes. A table of correspondence specifying the changes is located at ./data-raw/namingChanges.csv and is viewable by calling data(name_changes).
  • We changed the climate variable naming convention so that the climate element and the time of year are always separated by an underscore. e.g., Tmin01 becomes Tmin_01; DD_0_01 becomes DDsub0_01. The variables table called by data(variables) now has a field “Code_ClimateNA” with the variable codes used by ClimateBC/NA to allow users to crosswalk the two conventions.

User Actions Required

  • To implement this new version, users must clear their cache of climate data by running the following line of code: cache_clear(). We will do our best to avoid the need for wholesale cache-clearing in the future.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an error in the calculation of Hogg’s climatic moisture index (CMI). This error was inherited from an unreported error in Equation 3 of Hogg (1997).
  • Fixed an error in the calculation of precipitation as snow. The PAS parameters in ClimateNA and climr differ from those originally published in Wang et al. (2016).
  • fixed an out-of-bounds error that affected user queries close to the coastline.
  • Added missing future 2015-2100 time series for the GFDL-ESM4 climate model.

Enhancements

  • Added plot_timeSeries() and plot_timeSeries_input() functions to generate plots of 20th and 21st century climate change for user-selected locations and climate variables.
  • Added a 1901-2022 observational time series of for the combined Climatic Research Unit TS dataset (for Temperature) and Global Precipitation Climatology Centre dataset (for precipitation).
  • Extended the ClimateNA observational time series to 1901-2023.
  • Added a vignette (article) providing guidance for climate model ensemble selection and emissions scenario selection.
  • Added a vignette (article) on the methods used to select the 13 global climate models provided by climr, and the 8-model ensemble recommended for most purposes.

Known issues

  • Downloads of time series take a long time. We are looking into ways to speed this up, but until then we recommend users dedicate some time prior to analysis to cache their time series of interest for their areas of interest in a batch. Once the time series are cached, they don’t need to be downloaded again.
  • Related to the issue of time series download speed, the plot_timeSeries_input() function can take >1hr to run for the first time it is called for a location.

climr 0.0.4

Bug Fixes

  • Updated future timeseries data to include full 2015-2100 period and added missing models (built some cool bash scrips using parallel to quickly to raster2pgsql conversion for large numbers of files).
  • Updated historic modelled timeseries to extend to December 31, 2014.
  • Restructured naming scheme for timeseries data, updated internal dbnames table, and updated postgresql functions to allow hyphens in table names.
  • Reprocessed future GCM periods to include all of North America.
  • Fixed bug in plot_bivariate() for focal periods after 2001-2020.
  • Fixed caching issue where it would fail for very larger numbers of layers (>65000) by saving as .gri binary files.

Enhancements

  • Added checks for bounding box projection.

climr 0.0.3

Enhancements

  • new tests comparing to reference outputs
  • code further streamlined
  • new messages warn user about meaningless downscale/climr_downscale argument combinations
  • argument options in climr_downscale(..., which_normal) now match the options of normal_input(..., normal)
  • add plot_bivariate() function to generate plots showing climate model ensemble variation in recent and future climate change.
  • new functions list_historic_ts and list_gcm_ts to get available years for historic/future time series

Behaviour changes

  • xyz (argument to climr_downscale and downscale) and in_xyz (argument to get_bb), must now be a 4 column data.table (or coercible class) with lon, lat, elev and id columns. All other columns are ignored and NOT returned. Column order no longer matters.

Bugfixes

  • cache fixes
  • fixing geographical checks to get highest resolution beyond BC, Canada
  • fixing historic_input_ts to get only queried years
  • get_bb follows column names

Other

  • climr_downscale now accepts ... to pass arguments to downscale

climr 0.0.2

Bugfixes

  • fixed temperature values of composite anomalies
  • name of composite anomalies changed to “normal_composite” in normal_input(..., normal).

Documentation

  • added vignettes
  • pkgdown website for climr is live

climr 0.0.1

Enhancements

  • continuous testing implemented via GitHub Actions
  • code was cleaned up following tidyverse syntax recommendations
  • internal function definitions are now avoided
  • improvements to function documentation
  • removal of deprecated functions
  • increased code coverage
  • some code streamlining
  • added new composite climatologies of Western Canada and Western US.

Bugfixes

  • fixed examples
  • fixed incomplete changing of package name (climRpnw to climr)
  • added missing pkg imports
  • fixed caching problem where cached objects were not being retrieved when the PostGIS server was unavailable
  • fixed model names in PostGIS server, which fixed bugs in gcm_hist_input and gcm_ts_input.

Dependency changes

  • methods removed from Imports
  • sf added to Imports

Other

  • old data base access functions removed

climr 0.0.0.9990

Beta-version