MeteoCoast-EC: An Open-Access Hourly Meteorological Dataset from Automatic Weather Stations in Coastal Ecuador

MeteoCoast-EC is an open-access, multi-variable meteorological dataset comprising 1,171,323 hourly records collected between January 2022 and April 2026 from three automatic weather stations operated by the Universidad Técnica de Manabí (UTM) in the coastal region of Ecuador: Santa Ana (1.21°S, 80.36°W, 50 m a.s.l.), Portoviejo (1.05°S, 80.45°W, 64 m a.s.l.), and Calderón (0.98°S, 80.69°W, 150 m a.s.l.).

The dataset addresses a critical observational gap in the coastal region of Ecuador, which holds the lowest density of operational meteorological stations of any region in the country and where INAMHI does not currently maintain active stations at the Portoviejo and Calderón sites. The monitored area constitutes the primary agricultural and artisanal fishing zone of Ecuador and lies within the hydrographic systems most severely affected by extreme El Niño events.

Data are acquired using Davis Vantage Pro 2 sensors (model 6152) via a Python-based ETL pipeline that polls the local WeatherLink Live HTTP API every 60 seconds and stores the records in a PostgreSQL 14 database at hourly resolution.

This deposit contains two CSV files:
1) meteocoast-ec_raw.csv , the raw export with 75 columns delivered by the WeatherLink API plus the SQL aggregation layer (68 fields from the API JSON payload plus 7 fields added by the export query).
2) meteocoast-ec_processed.csv , the cleaned and processed release with 33 columns materializing 23 analytically distinct variables (4 export-level identifiers, 1 auxiliary calendar_day field, 19 retained variables in their native Davis units, and 9 SI-converted equivalents), produced by a documented R cleaning pipeline that applies WMO-aligned plausibility filters, sentinel removal, daily temperature extreme recomputation, and SI unit conversions.

The retained variables, listed in the order of the processed CSV, cover row and station identifiers (id, station_code, name) and the hourly ISO 8601 timestamp (iso_date); air temperature in its instantaneous, daily minimum, and daily maximum forms (temp, temp_min, temp_max); relative humidity (hum); the composite THSW comfort index (thsw_index); solar radiation and
UV index on the WHO scale (solar_rad, uv_index); sea-level and station-level barometric pressure (bar_sea_level, bar_absolute); instantaneous wind speed and direction (wind_speed_last, wind_dir_last); the WMO 10-min wind quartet of mean speed, peak gust, scalar-mean direction, and direction at peak gust (wind_speed_avg_last_10_min, wind_speed_hi_last_10_min, wind_dir_scalar_avg_last_10_min, wind_dir_at_hi_speed_last_10_min); rainfall at three relevant temporal scales, namely instantaneous rate, 15-min peak rate, daily accumulation, and rolling 24-hour accumulation (rain_rate_last_mm, rain_rate_hi_last_15_min_mm, rainfall_daily_mm, rainfall_last_24_hr_mm); (trans_battery_flag).