Finding each time of daily max variable in climate data - r

Question

I have a large dataset over many years which has several variables, but the one I am interested in is wind speed and dateTime. I want to find the time of the max wind speed for every day in the data set. I have hourly data in Posixct format, with WS as a numeric with occasional NAs. Below is a short data set that should hopefully illustrate my point, however my dateTime wasn't working out to be hourly data, but it provides enough for a sample.
dateTime <- seq(as.POSIXct("2011-01-01 00:00:00", tz = "GMT"),
as.POSIXct("2011-01-29 23:00:00", tz = "GMT"),
by = 60*24)
WS <- sample(0:20,1798,rep=TRUE)
WD <- sample(0:390,1798,rep=TRUE)
Temp <- sample(0:40,1798,rep=TRUE)
df <- data.frame(dateTime,WS,WD,Temp)
df$WS[WS>15] <- NA
I have previously tried creating a new column with just a posix date (minus time) to allow for day isolation, however all the things I have tried have only returned a shortened data frame with date and WS (aggregate, splitting, xts). Aggregate was only one that didn't do this, however, it gave me 23:00:00 as a constant time which isn't correct.
I have looked at How to calculate daily means, medians, from weather variables data collected hourly in R?, https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/7268/how-to-aggregate-by-minute-data-for-a-week-into-hourly-means and others but none have answered this question, or the solutions have not returned an ideal result.
I need to compare the results of this analysis with another data frame, so hence the reason I need the actual time when the max wind speed occurred for each day in the dataset. I have a feeling there is a simple solution, however, this has me frustrated.

Answer 1

A dplyr solution may be:
library(dplyr)
df %>%
mutate(date = as.Date(dateTime)) %>%
left_join(
df %>%
mutate(date = as.Date(dateTime)) %>%
group_by(date) %>%
summarise(max_ws = max(WS, na.rm = TRUE)) %>%
ungroup(),
by = "date"
) %>%
select(-date)
# dateTime WS WD Temp max_ws
# 1 2011-01-01 00:00:00 NA 313 2 15
# 2 2011-01-01 00:24:00 7 376 1 15
# 3 2011-01-01 00:48:00 3 28 28 15
# 4 2011-01-01 01:12:00 15 262 24 15
# 5 2011-01-01 01:36:00 1 149 34 15
# 6 2011-01-01 02:00:00 4 319 33 15
# 7 2011-01-01 02:24:00 15 280 22 15
# 8 2011-01-01 02:48:00 NA 110 23 15
# 9 2011-01-01 03:12:00 12 93 15 15
# 10 2011-01-01 03:36:00 3 5 0 15

Answer 2

Dee asked for: "I want to find the time of the max wind speed for every day in the data set." Other answers have calculated the max(WS) for every day, but not at which hour that occured.
So I propose the following solution with dyplr:
library(dplyr)
set.seed(12345)
dateTime <- seq(as.POSIXct("2011-01-01 00:00:00", tz = "GMT"),
as.POSIXct("2011-01-29 23:00:00", tz = "GMT"),
by = 60*24)
WS <- sample(0:20,1738,rep=TRUE)
WD <- sample(0:390,1738,rep=TRUE)
Temp <- sample(0:40,1738,rep=TRUE)
df <- data.frame(dateTime,WS,WD,Temp)
df$WS[WS>15] <- NA
df %>%
group_by(Date = as.Date(dateTime)) %>%
mutate(Hour = hour(dateTime),
Hour_with_max_ws = Hour[which.max(WS)])
I want to highlight out, that if there are several hours with the same maximal windspeed (in the example below: 15), only the first hour with max(WS) will be shown as result, though the windspeed 15 was reached on that date at the hours 0, 3, 4, 21 and 22! So you might need a more specific logic.

Answer 3

For the sake of completeness (and because I like the concise code) here is a "one-liner" using data.table:
library(data.table)
setDT(df)[, max.ws := max(WS, na.rm = TRUE), by = as.IDate(dateTime)][]
dateTime WS WD Temp max.ws
1: 2011-01-01 00:00:00 NA 293 22 15
2: 2011-01-01 00:24:00 15 55 14 15
3: 2011-01-01 00:48:00 NA 186 24 15
4: 2011-01-01 01:12:00 4 300 22 15
5: 2011-01-01 01:36:00 0 120 36 15
---
1734: 2011-01-29 21:12:00 12 249 5 15
1735: 2011-01-29 21:36:00 9 282 21 15
1736: 2011-01-29 22:00:00 12 238 6 15
1737: 2011-01-29 22:24:00 10 127 21 15
1738: 2011-01-29 22:48:00 13 297 0 15