Calculate and plot sunrise and sunset times with R

Problem

We would like to calculate and plot the sunrise and sunset times based on any location's latitude and longitude coordinates with R.

Solution

1. Compute sunrise and sunset times

First we calculate the sunrise and sunset times using the function getSunlightTimes from the package suncalc. We pass the desired date interval, the appropiate latitude and longitude coordinates, and time zone (tz).

library(suncalc) 
library(tidyverse)
library(scales)
df <-
  getSunlightTimes(
    date = seq.Date(as.Date("2017-12-01"), as.Date("2018-12-31"), by = 1),
    keep = c("sunrise", "sunriseEnd", "sunset", "sunsetStart"),
    lat = 39.8628,
    lon = 4.0273,
    tz = "CET"
  )

2. Sunrise and sunset times plot

We need to manipulate the original data frame to calculate the difference between midnight start of day, and the sunrise and sunset times. Then we plot those two new variables using geom_ribbon from ggplot2. We further customize the axes, and title.

# Sunrise/set
df %>%
  mutate(
    date = as.POSIXct(date) - 12 * 60 * 60 ,
    sunrise = sunrise - date,
    sunset =  sunset - date,
  ) %>%
  ggplot() +
  geom_ribbon(aes(x = date, ymin = sunrise, ymax = sunset),
              fill = "#FDE725FF",
              alpha = .8) + # "#ffeda0"
  scale_x_datetime(
    breaks = seq(as.POSIXct(min(df$date)), as.POSIXct(max(df$date)), "month"),
    expand = c(0, 0),
    labels = date_format("%b %y"),
    minor_breaks = NULL
  ) +
  scale_y_continuous(
    limits = c(0, 24),
    breaks = seq(0, 24, 2),
    expand = c(0, 0),
    minor_breaks = NULL
  ) +
  labs(
    x = "Date",
    y = "Hours",
    title = sprintf(
      "Sunrise and Sunset for %s\n%s ",
      "Toledo (Spain)",
      paste0(as.Date(range(df$date)), sep = " ", collapse = "to ")
    )
  ) +
  theme(
    panel.background = element_rect(fill = "#180F3EFF"),
    panel.grid = element_line(colour = "grey", linetype = "dashed")
  )

3. Daytime duration

Very similar to the preceding plot. This time we only need to calculate the day_length and plot the results using geom_area and geom_line.

df %>%
  mutate(
    date = as.POSIXct(date),
    day_length = as.numeric(sunset - sunrise)
  ) %>%
  ggplot(aes(x = date, y = day_length)) +
  geom_area(fill = "#FDE725FF", alpha = .4) +
  geom_line(color = "#525252") +
  scale_x_datetime(
    expand = c(0, 0),
    labels = date_format("%b '%y"),
    breaks =  seq(as.POSIXct(min(df$date)), as.POSIXct(max(df$date)), "month"),
    minor_breaks = NULL
  ) +
  scale_y_continuous(
    limits = c(0, 24),
    breaks = seq(0, 24, 2),
    expand = c(0, 0),
    minor_breaks = NULL
  ) +
  labs(x = "Date", y = "Hours", title = "Toledo (Spain) - Daytime duration") +
  theme_bw()

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• English posts

References

• suncalc
• ggplot2 formats