Open-Radar-Data

A place to share radar data with the community, shared between the open radar packages

Sample data sets

The files contained in this repository are used as sample data in openradar examples/notebooks and are downloaded by open-radar-data package. It includes single sweep PPI and RHI as well as complete volume files of weather radar (and lidar) in many different source formats. You can explore the contents in the open_radar_data/registry.txt.

Adding new datasets

To add a new dataset file, please follow these steps:

1. Add the dataset file to the data/ directory
2. From the command line, run python make_registry.py script to update the registry file residing in open_radar_data/registry.txt
3. Commit and push your changes to GitHub

Data sources and licenses

Files from third-party sources are listed here with their origin and license. They are redistributed unmodified under the license of the source; please cite the source when using them, and add an entry when contributing such a file.

References

1. Dias Neto, J. (2022). Wind radial obsevations: sample data [Dataset]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7366881
2. Kozmar, H., Burlando, M., Romanic, D., Ricci, A., Ivancic, I., Grisogono, B., & Hadžić, N. (2026). ERIES-LIDAR: Lidar measurements of Ligurian downslope windstorms [Dataset]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20160278

Using datasets in notebooks and/or scripts

• Ensure the open_radar_data package is installed in your environment

  python -m pip install open-radar-data
  
  # or
  
  python -m pip install git+https://github.com/openradar/open-radar-data
  
  # or
  
  conda install -c conda-forge open-radar-data
  

• Import DATASETS and inspect the registry to find out which datasets are available

  In [1]: from open_radar_data import DATASETS
  
  In [2]: DATASETS.registry_files
  Out[2]: ['sample_sgp_data.nc`]
  

• To fetch a data file of interest, use the .fetch method and provide the filename of the data file. This will

  • download and cache the file if it doesn't exist already.
  • retrieve and return the local path

  In [4]: filepath = DATASETS.fetch('sample_sgp_data.nc')
  
  In [5]: filepath
  Out[5]: '/Users/mgrover/Library/Caches/open-radar-data/sample_sgp_data.nc'
  

• Once you have access to the local filepath, you can then use it to load your dataset into pandas or xarray or your package of choice:

  In [6]: radar = pyart.io.read(filepath)
  

Changing the default data cache location

The default cache location (where the data are saved on your local system) is dependent on the operating system. You can use the locate() method to identify it:

from open_radar_data import locate
locate()

The location can be overwritten by the OPEN_RADAR_DATA_DIR environment variable to the desired destination.