Data

The atmos data set resides in the nasaweather package of the R programming language. It contains a collection of atmospheric variables measured between 1995 and 2000 on a grid of 576 coordinates in the western hemisphere. The data set comes from the 2006 ASA Data Expo.

Some of the variables in the atmos data set are:

• cloudlow - The mean percent of the sky covered by clouds at low altitudes.

• cloudmid - The mean percent of the sky covered by clouds at mid-range altitudes.

• cloudhigh - The mean percent of the sky covered by clouds at high altitudes.

You can convert the temperature unit from Kelvin to Celsius with the formula

\[ celsius = kelvin - 273.15 \]

And you can convert the result to Fahrenheit with the formula

\[ fahrenheit = celsius \times \frac{9}{5} + 32 \]

Cleaning

For the remainder of the report, we will look only at data from the year 2000. We aggregate our data by location, using the R code below.

means <- atmos %>%
  filter(year == year) %>%
  group_by(long, lat) %>%
  summarize(temp = mean(temp, na.rm = TRUE),
         pressure = mean(pressure, na.rm = TRUE),
         ozone = mean(ozone, na.rm = TRUE),
         cloudlow = mean(cloudlow, na.rm = TRUE),
         cloudmid = mean(cloudmid, na.rm = TRUE),
         cloudhigh = mean(cloudhigh, na.rm = TRUE)) %>%
  ungroup()

clouds <- means %>%
  select(-(temp:ozone)) %>%
  gather("altitude", "coverage", 3:5)