How to use this dataset

This dataset is kept under version control in a git repository. The repository is hosted on GitHub (and the documentation made with GitHub Pages). The repository is https://github.com/oldweather/DWR.

If you are familiar with GitHub, you already know what to do: If you’d prefer not to bother with that, you can download the whole dataset as a zip file.

The data themselves are distibuted as a set of plain text files (in the ‘data’ directory - note that the repository also contains the source data files from which they were constructed). Also included is a python module providing an API to the data - to use this module, download the dataset and then install it with:

python setup.py install --user

You should then be able to run scripts like:

import DWR
import datetime
obs=DWR.load_observations('prmsl',
                          datetime.datetime(1903,10,1,12),
                          datetime.datetime(1903,10,2,12))

If you use this dataset, please let us know, by raising an issue. You are not obliged to do this, but it would help the campaign to rescue even more data.