VanWeather - Vancouver Climate Tracker Dashboard ⛅🌧️🌞 🌨️❄️

Welcome to the VanWeather, an interactive tool designed to analyze and visualize weather patterns in Vancouver.

Purpose

The Problem

Climate conditions in the Vancouver region have undergone significant changes over the years, resulting in shifting climate patterns, increased climate extremes, and notable environmental impacts. However, stakeholders currently lack accessible tools to effectively analyze historical climate data and compare trends over time. This limitation hinders efforts to understand the evolving climate landscape and take necessary actions to address and adapt to the effects of climate change.

Solution

VanWeather dashboard addresses the challenge of understanding and adapting to climate change impacts in Vancouver by providing an interactive platform that integrates historical and recent meteorological data. This dashboard allows users to analyze and visualize climate trends and patterns, facilitating informed discussions, policy formulation, and community actions to address and adapt to the evolving climate dynamics at the local level. By empowering stakeholders with accessible insights into Vancouver's changing climate, the VanWeather dashboard supports proactive measures and sustainable decision-making to enhance preparedness for climate-related challenges in the city.

The Dashboard

The dashboard provides a powerful tool to explore Vancouver's weather trends over time. By selecting specific date ranges and applying aggregation options like daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly filters, users can gain valuable insights into temperature variations, wind patterns, precipitation levels, and sunlight duration within the city. This data exploration facilitates a detailed analysis of how these weather elements have changed across different time scales, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of Vancouver's climate patterns.

For instance, users can identify seasonal trends by viewing monthly or yearly aggregations, allowing them to observe annual temperature fluctuations or variations in precipitation throughout the city. Weekly or daily views offer a more granular perspective, pinpointing specific weather events or short-term trends over shorter time intervals. Wind and sunlight data can be similarly analyzed to uncover weather patterns.

Weather Data Variables

• Maximum temperature (C) at 2m: The highest recorded air temperature at 2 meters above ground level for each day.
• Minimum temperature (C) at 2m: The lowest recorded air temperature at 2 meters above ground level for each day.
• Mean temperature (C) at 2m: The average air temperature at 2 meters above ground level for each day.
• Maximum apparent temperature (C): The highest perceived (feel like) temperature, considering various atmospheric factors such as humidity, wind speed, and radiation.
• Minimum apparent temperature (C): The lowest perceived (feel like) temperature, considering various atmospheric factors such as humidity, wind speed, and radiation.
• Mean apparent temperature (C): The average perceived (feel like) temperature, considering various atmospheric factors such as humidity, wind speed, and radiation.
• Sum of precipitation (mm): The total amount of precipitation (rain, showers, and snowfall) in millimeters for each day.
• Sum of rain (mm): The total amount of rain in millimeters for each day.
• Sum of snowfall (cm): The total amount of snowfall in centimeters for each day.
• Hours of precipitation: The number of hours within a day during which rain occurred.
• Maximum wind speed: The highest wind speed recorded on a given day.
• Maximum wind gust: The maximum wind gust (sudden strong wind) recorded on a given day.
• Sum of shortwave radiation (MJ): The total solar radiation received in Megajoules per square meter on a given day.
• Evapotranspiration (mm): Reference Evapotranspiration (ET₀) representing the amount of water that evaporates from well-watered grass. It is calculated using temperature, wind speed, humidity, and solar radiation data and is commonly used to estimate irrigation needs for plants.

Get Involved

Click here to start using VanWeather dashboard.

If you have any feedback or input for our team, you can reach out via opening a new issue in this repository.

Developer Note:

To use this dashboard on your local machine, please follow the instructions provided below.

1. Clone the repository locally. Open your terminal and execute the following command:

    git clone https://github.com/UBC-MDS/DSCI-532_2024_10_vanweather.git

2. Create and activate the conda environment. Navigate to the root directory of the repository and execute the following command:

    conda env create --file environment.yaml

    conda activate vanweather

3. Create a branch for local development and make your changes:

    git checkout -b name-of-your-branch

4. To run the dashboard. Navigate to src then run app.py:

    cd src

    python app.py

5. You should expect to see output in your terminal that looks similar to:

    Running on http://127.0.0.1:8080 

   Paste this link into your preferred browser to load the app.

Contributing Guidelines

Please refer to our contributing guidelines to learn more about contributing to the VanWeather dashboard project. This project follows a Code of Conduct, and by participating, you agree to uphold its terms. Thank you for your interest in contributing!

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.

Contributors

@AnuBanga, @czwcandy @sivakornchong @WeilinHan8