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UK Minimum Temperatures

An exercise in mapping from csv to XML and back, and in geocoding. Working language is XQuery on eXist

Links

• Article in Guardian Data store
• The original Google Spreadsheet
• Station lat/longs from British Atmospheric Data Centre
• Merged XML data
• Generated KML for Jan-07
• Google Map for Jan 07
• Generated CSV
• Augmented Spreadsheet (09-Jan)

Process

• convert original Google Spreadsheet with output=csv to XML via XQuery script to a station list (placeName and temps only)
• Get all MIDAS stations which produce CARLOS messages (seemed to cover nearly all the met stations but just guessing) by extracting the kml by message type from the BACD site, saving the CARLOS subset and converting to an XML station list
• match the stations in the spreadsheet to the CARLOS stations using an XQuery script
• hand locate the unmatched (only 2) stations using the search interface on the BADC site and create an additional station list
• re-run the match, merging in this additional data and store to an enhanced station list docment:
• generate a kml file - hopeless as a visualisation of the data however
• generate a CSV file from the XML and load into Google Spreadsheets

To do

• allow columns to have arbitrary null strings - here #NA - regen
• Visualization of value spaces
• allow column names with attributes - for dated temperatures
• decide on root name stationList / stations
• placeName is not the right element name since these are really station names
• generate a sortable table view using a Javascript library
• Find out why feed export didn't work - authentication?
• export as csv guided by schema