NEWS.md

weatherOz 3.0.0

Major release - New forecast functionality, breaking changes to wind data structure, and critical bug fixes

Breaking changes

Wind data structure changed in get_dpird_summaries()

Wind data is now returned in wide format with separate columns for each measurement height instead of long format with a wind_height column.

• Update code accessing wind columns to use the new _3m or _10m suffixed names
• Remove references to the wind_height column (no longer exists)
• Wind data now provides one row per period instead of multiple rows per height

Before (v2.0.2 and earlier):

# multiple rows per station/date
wind_height                    # column indicating 3m or 10m
wind_avg_speed                 # single column
wind_max_speed                 # single column
wind_max_time                  # single column
wind_max_direction_degrees
wind_max_direction_compass_point

After (v3.0.0):

# single row per station/date
wind_avg_speed_3m              # separate column for 3m height
wind_avg_speed_10m             # separate column for 10m height
wind_max_speed_3m
wind_max_speed_10m
wind_max_time_3m
wind_max_time_10m
wind_max_date_3m               # NEW: date component
wind_max_date_10m              # NEW: date component
wind_max_time_of_day_3m        # NEW: time-of-day component
wind_max_time_of_day_10m       # NEW: time-of-day component
wind_max_direction_degrees_3m
wind_max_direction_degrees_10m
wind_max_direction_compass_point_3m
wind_max_direction_compass_point_10m

New features

MET Norway forecast support

• Added get_metno_forecast() - Retrieves hourly weather forecasts for any Australian location from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute (MET Norway) Locationforecast 2.0 API
• Added get_metno_daily_forecast() - Wrapper function that aggregates hourly forecasts into daily summaries (min/max temperature, total precipitation, average wind speed, etc.)
• Added helper functions for advanced users:
  • metno_timeseries_to_data_table() - Converts raw JSON timeseries to tidy data.table
  • metno_resample_data_table() - Aggregates hourly data to daily, weekly, or monthly frequencies
  • metno_get_dominant_symbol() - Determines most representative weather symbol for a period
• New vignette: "weatherOz for the Locationforecast 2.0 (Norwegian Meteorologisk Institutt)" demonstrating forecast usage and combining historical + forecast data

Bug fixes

Critical: Fixed one-day gap between historical and forecast data

When combining historical data (SILO/DPIRD) with MET Norway forecast data, there was a missing day causing a discontinuous timeline due to a timezone double-conversion bug in metno_resample_data_table().

• Modified metno_resample_data_table() to check timezone before conversion
• Forecast now correctly starts from today instead of tomorrow

Wind data parsing improvements

• Fixed parsing of wind time columns with mixed date/time formats
• Added .parse_dpird_time_col() internal helper for robust time parsing
• Added .widen_wind_height_cols() internal helper for reshaping wind data from long to wide format
• Wind max time now correctly parsed for both date-only and datetime values

Code improvements

Internal function refactoring

Extracted helper functions from get_dpird_summaries() to improve maintainability and reduce code duplication (no user-facing changes):

• .load_dpird_metadata_file() - Eliminated 60 lines of duplicated metadata cache loading code
• .validate_and_expand_dpird_values() - Validates and expands "all" to complete value lists
• .validate_dpird_interval() - Fuzzy matches intervals and modifies values based on interval constraints
• .calculate_dpird_request_records() - Calculates expected records and validates date ranges
• .prepare_wind_time_columns() - Parses wind time columns and derives date/time components

Documentation

• Added vignette for MET Norway forecast functionality with examples of:
  • Hourly and daily forecasts
  • Combining historical and forecast data
  • Agricultural heat stress event planning
  • Custom temporal aggregations
• Updated all vignettes to reflect new forecast capabilities
• Improve docs for wind data structure changes

Testing

• All 457 tests pass with new functionality
• Added tests for MET Norway forecast functions
• Updated wind data tests to reflect new structure

weatherOz 2.0.2

CRAN Re-submission - Maintenance release addressing archival issues

Bug fixes

• Made station count tests more flexible to accommodate natural changes in weather station networks over time, using ranges instead of exact counts.

• Fixed compatibility with crul 1.6.0 by updating minimum vcr requirement to 2.0.0, resolving VCR cassette testing issues caused by deprecated mock() function.

• URL updates following DPIRD IT system migration:

  • API endpoints: Maintained on api.agric.wa.gov.au
  • Updated DPIRD API documentation URLs: agric.wa.gov.au/apis/api-terms-and-conditions to dpird.wa.gov.au/online-tools/apis/api-terms-and-conditions/ and agric.wa.gov.au/form/dpird-api-registration to dpird.wa.gov.au/forms/dpird-api-registration/
  • Updated displaced URL: pulseaus.com.au/about/australian-pulse-industry to grainsaustralia.com.au
  • Updated all references in vignettes, README files, and function documentation

Additional fixes and improvements:

• Addressed CRAN request to "remove the single quotes around every term in the description that is not a package/software/API name" and removed examples for unexported functions.

• Addressed CRAN URL check issues by updating all redirected links to their new working locations.

• Updated all man pages with corrected URLs; Fixed all broken links in README and vignettes.

• Added @importFrom curl directives for all curl functions used in the package to resolve import warnings.

• Flexible station count testing: Made tests more resilient by using ranges instead of exact station counts.

  • Accommodates natural changes in weather station networks over time
  • Prevents test failures due to minor station count variations

weatherOz 2.0.1

Minor changes

• Updated testthat tests to reflect changes in weather station and BOM Radar imagery availability

Bug fixes

• get_stations_metadata() fails to fetch data with invalid API key but provided unhelpful error.

• Added check to query_dpird_api() when using an invalid DPIRD API key (Issue 94).

Breaking changes

• Functions get_ag_bulletin() and parse_ag_bulletin() have been defunct because the underlying BOM agricultural bulletin service is no longer available. This removal constitutes a breaking change; please update your code accordingly.

• Documentation has been updated to reflect the removal of the get_ag_bulletin() and parse_ag_bulletin() functions.

• Tests for the get_ag_bulletin() and parse_ag_bulletin() functions now errors given that the functions are now defunct.

Bug fixes

• Fixes Issue 90 with the get_dpird_summaries() function where tests had fixed dates and errors were generated. The tests test-get_dpird_summaries.R have been updated to use previous year from the current date and the tests now pass.

• Fixes other bugs with the find_stations_in() and function where the function would not return the correct number of stations, given recent adjustments to the weather station infrastructure.

Additional fixes and improvements:

• Re-documented package to reflect changes

• Updated test vcr cassette/fixtures

• Updated BOM-related vignette

• Updated WORDLIST for spelling checks

weatherOz 1.0.0.9000

Bug Fixes

• Provides useful feedback when users provide a NULL API key value.

• Fixes Issue 82 where Average wind speed data extracted using get_dpird_summaries() is ranked from lowest to highest and does not match the observation recorded at that time from DPIRD summaries, thanks to @alycest.

• Fixes Issue 83 where average wind direction data extracted using get_dpird_summaries() do not match the observation average wind direction recorded at that time in DPIRD summaries, thanks to @alycest.

• Fixes an error in documentation about the number of types of objects accepted by find_stations_in().

• Fixes a typo in the README that provided incorrect arguments for get_key(), thanks to @johnbaums.

weatherOz 1.0.0

Major Changes

• Addressed comments after initial CRAN submission (reduce file size and update links to packages/function in the documentation).

• Published manuscript describing package in the Journal of Open Source Software

• Package was peer reviewed.

• Changes the name of the function get_station_metadata() to get_stations_metadata() to avoid clashes with {stationaRy}.

• Adds new functionality, find_stations_in() to assist in finding stations in a bounding box or geospatial polygon.

• Allows user to pass along a factor as the station_code when requesting weather data. This allows for the use of the metadata returned from get_stations_metadata() to be used directly in queries without changing the class of the station_code column from factor to character.

• Added functionality to get_station_metadata() so that it returns the metadata for only one station if required, commit.

• Several enhanced checks for user inputs to ensure that valid requests are made before sending the API queries are now in place.

Bug Fixes

• find_nearby_stations()

  • Fixes bug where find_forecast_towns() returned all values, not the proper values.

  • Fixes bug where BOM and SILO metadata were not properly merged when using find_nearby_stations()

  • Fixes bug where closed stations are included in the nearest stations when using find_nearby_stations() and include_closed = FALSE (default).

  • Fixes the messages when stations aren't found nearby. In certain cases the message indicated that a station_code was used when latitude and longitude had been provided and vice versa.

  • Fixes bug when there are no stations that meet the criteria set by the user and an error was emitted that "x" must be a {data.table} object. The function now simply errors if there are no stations from either API that meet the criteria.

• get_dpird_extremes()

  • Fixes example in get_dpird_extremes() that didn't use "your_api_key" as all other examples did for error checking.

  • Fixes example for get_dpird_extremes() that didn't follow the package's standard use of "your_api_key" for the api_key value in the example.

• Fixes the re-export of terra::plot() where checks indicated that it does not have a documented return value or examples.

• Fixes a bug where the package data was not available when this package was called by another, e.g., {extractOz} used get_patched_point() but could not validate the user-input values because silo_daily_values could not be found.

• Fixes bug where results from get_dpird_summaries() were truncated to only a few of the last results requested rather than the full set from start date to end date.

• Fixes bug where the DPIRD API would not properly respond to requests from Windows OS machines.

• Fixes bug where SILO Data Drill gridded data were not available with enough precision.

• Fixes bug where include_closed wasn't passed along to the API when querying DPIRD station weather data. All queries now included closed stations by default so that a request for a closed station is not denied due to this not being specified, commit.

weatherOz 0.0.1

• Added a NEWS.md file to track changes to the package.