Existing R Packages for use in climate analysis

The CRAN web site has a wide range of contributed packages for statistical analysis. Below is a list of CRAN contributed packages useful for climate analysis. These are the installation instructions for the Unix platform and the Windows system.

R packages for reading and writing NetCDF files

• RNetCDF: R interface to NetCDF datasets. Author: Pavel Michna. Important note: The NetCDF and the udunits libraries must be already installed on your unix system so that you can install this package.
• ncvar: High level R interface to NetCDF datasets. Author: Juerg Schmidli.

R packages for plotting maps

• maps: Draw Geographical Maps. Author: Ray Brownrigg and Thomas P Minka
• mapdata: Extra Map Databases. Author: Ray Brownrigg.
• mapproj: Map Projections. Authors: Ray Brownrigg and Thomas P Minka.

The web page of Peter Dunn from the University of South Queensland has useful information on how to obtain coast line datasets for plotting maps.

R packages for downscaling, forecast verification and probabilitic forecasting

• clim.pact: Package for climate analysis and downscaling of monthly mean and daily mean global climate scenarios. Author: Rasmus E. Benestad.
• verification: Forecast verification utilities. Author: NCAR- Research Application Program.
• ensembleBMA: Probabilistic forecasting using Bayesian Model Averaging. Authors: Adrian E. Raftery, J. McLean Sloughter, Michael Polakowski.
• ProbForecastGOP: Probabilistic Weather Field Forecast using the GOP method. Authors: Yulia Gel, Adrian E. Raftery, Tilmann Gneiting, Veronica J. Berrocal.

R package for extreme value analysis

• evd: Functions for extreme value distributions. Author: Alec Stephenson. Function fbvpot by Chris Ferro.
• evir: Extreme values in R. Authors: Alexander McNeil (S EVIS original code), Alec Stephenson (R code).
• evdbayes: Bayesian analysis in extreme value theory. Author: Alec Stephenson.
• extRemes: Extreme value toolkit. Authors: Eric Gilleland, Rick Katz and Greg Young.
• ismev: An introduction to statistical modeling of extreme values. Authors: Stuart Coles (S original code) and Alec Stephenson (R code).

Other R software

• ETCCDMI homogeneity and extremes indices. Authors: Xuebin Zhang, Xiaolan Wang and Yang Feng.
• UCAR: The Extremes Toolkit. Authors: Eric Gilleland, Rick Katz and Greg Young.