Case study of climatic analysis to plan for future use of R-Instat

[rdstern]

This was consultancy work for Mozambique. We contributed to climate profiles for 7 zones in Northern Mozambique. Our (Danny and myself) part of the work was to produce analyses using station data for each zone.

a) Earlier this year I produces the tables and graphs (using R-Instat) for one station. I had difficulties with some of the graphs (e.g. producing dates on axes) that needed help from Danny. The graphics is being improved, so these graphs should be easier to produce, from the R-Instat dialogues) in the future.
b) I did not keep a record of the R-commands for this set of graphs. In hindsight that might have helped our later work, but there were many iterations and so that was not a critical issue. However, it would be useful if the keeping of the commands were to be even easier than now.
c) The main job was to extend the work to data from 7 stations - one from each zone. This required a lot of tidying. I found some minor inconveniences in R-Instat, but it worked ok. It resulted in a single file with tmax, tmin and rainfall for the 7 stations. I did send a file of the commands as well as the resulting data file to Danny. But I am not sure this is particularly needed.
d) Danny then worked in RStudio to quality control the data and then to prepare the graphs and summaries, and these were then supplied as the provisional results.
e) Some changes were needed and they were easy for Danny to do, because he had the script.
f) This was fine, but I would like to use this example to check how more of this work could be done using R-Instat.
g) Danny has scripts for the quality control. We also have dialogues and I suggest that R-Instat, in its current form could have been used instead for that stage.
h) The provision of many graphs, with a set for each station, would however, have been more complicated in R-Instat. So, currently that was sensible to use a script for.
i) We have yet to check whether that script will run in just the same way, in R-Instat. If so, then it would provide an option for an initial script to be written by an R-expert - possibly with RStudio, and then revised within R-Instat. Hence Danny would not be needed for revisions. That would be useful.
j) Later it would also be interesting to see whether the whole task could be undertaken in R-Instat. This could either be by writing the script in R-Instat, or by working through dialogues and then preparing the script.