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getRad

getRad is an R package that provides a unified interface to download radar data for biological and aeroecological research. It gives access to both polar volume radar data and vertical profile data from different sources and loads it directly into R. getRad also facilitates further exploration of the data by other tools such as bioRad by standardizing the data.

Installation

Install the latest released version from CRAN:

install.packages("getRad")

Or the development version from GitHub:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("aloftdata/getRad")

Usage

Download a polar volume, and then plot it using bioRad:

library(getRad)
library(bioRad)
# Plot daytime insect movements in Finland (Mäkinen et al. 2022)
pvol <- get_pvol("fianj", as.POSIXct("2012-05-17 14:00", tz = "UTC"))
plot(project_as_ppi(get_scan(pvol, 0), range_max = 75000))
plot(calculate_vp(pvol, h_layer = 50, n_layer = 40, warning = FALSE))

# Plot nocturnal migration in Finland
pvol <- get_pvol("fianj", as.POSIXct("2012-05-11 23:00", tz = "UTC"))
plot(project_as_ppi(get_scan(pvol, 0), range_max = 75000))
plot(calculate_vp(pvol, h_layer = 50, n_layer = 40, warning = FALSE))

Download a vertical profile time series from the Aloft bucket:

# Plot VPTS data for two radars
vpts_list <- get_vpts(
  radar = c("bejab", "deess"),
  datetime = lubridate::interval(
    lubridate::as_datetime("2021-10-03 16:00:00"),
    lubridate::as_datetime("2021-10-05 10:00:00")
  ),
  source = "baltrad"
)
par(mfrow = 2:1)
for (i in names(vpts_list)) {
  plot(regularize_vpts(vpts_list[[i]]), main = i)
}

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Install

install.packages('getRad')

Monthly Downloads

242

Version

0.2.4

License

MIT + file LICENSE

Issues

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Maintainer

Bart Kranstauber

Last Published

December 10th, 2025

Functions in getRad (0.2.4)

req_cache_getrad

Function to set the cache for a getRad specific httr2 request
get_pvol

Get polar volume (PVOL) data from supported sources
get_weather_radars

Get weather radar metadata
get_vpts_coverage

Get VPTS file coverage from supported sources
set_secret

Set or get secrets from the keyring
get_vpts

Get vertical profile time series (VPTS) data from supported sources
get_vpts_rmi

Get VPTS data from RMI
get_vpts_aloft

Get VPTS data from the Aloft bucket
getRad-package

getRad: Download Radar Data for Biological Research