NEWS

PEcAn.data.atmosphere 1.8.0.9000

download.AmerifluxLBL no longer wrongly re-fetches raw zipfiles when overwrite = FALSE

Extensive code cleanup and fixes to function documentation [@moki1202, ; @meetagrawal, #3212; @aariq, #3055; @Its-Maniaco, #2954]
Retired packages maptools and rgdal are no longer imported [@istfer, #3228]
Unit conversion now uses PEcAn.utils::ud_convert to avoid relying on orphaned package udunits2 [@nanu1695, #2989]
download.MERRA() now respects overwrite = FALSE [@meetagrawal09, #3169]
download.MERRA() can now find data from September of 2020 [@KristinaRiemer, #2888]
download.Fluxnet2015() now gives a more useful message when passed a malformed URL [@meetagrawal, #3130]
cfmet.downscale.hourly now produces the correct number of rows for timesteps other than 1 hour (#3270). Note that at extreme timesteps the downscaling algorithm may or may not give sensible values; this patch just ensures it gives the number of values you asked for.

Newly supported met data sources:
- ERA5 via ERA5_met_process() [@DongchenZ, #2886]
- NOAA GEFS data hosted by the Ecological Forecasting Initiative, via download_NOAA_GEFS_EFI() [@helge22a, #3174] (For GEFS data directly from NOAA, continue to use download.NOAA_GEFS)
Integration tests of met download from CRUNCEP (#3203), ERA5 (#3207), and Ameriflux (#3208) [@meetagrawal09]

Download of Ameriflux data now uses the amerifluxr package, replacing old custom download code [@HenriKajasilta, #2907]
metgapfill() can now handle partial years [@istfer, #2878]
Downscaling and load.cfmet now return plain data frames rather than data.tables. Package data.table is no longer a dependency.

Helper function robustly has moved to package PEcAn.utils [@meetagrawal, #3096]
Helper function db.site.lat.lon has been removed. Users should use PEcAn.DB::query.site(id, con)[c("lat", "lon")] instead [@Sweetdevil144, #3308]

All changes in 1.7.1 and earlier were recorded in a single file for all of the PEcAn packages; please see https://github.com/PecanProject/pecan/blob/v1.7.1/CHANGELOG.md for details.