I am encountering a problem when using the IMPUMS GEOLEV1 shapefile. The climate datasets that I am working with (ECMRWF, CRU) have latitudes that run from 0 to 360 — I think this is pretty standard. The GEOLEV1 shapefile has a latitude that runs from -180 to 180.
When I map the GEOLEV1 shapefile over my climate data, therefore, I only map the east half of the world, with latitude between 0 and 180. The shapefile in the 180 degrees to the west of the Prime Meridian are lost (I think Arc GIS will map the file properly, but I am using R, which doesn’t correct such things automatically.)
Is there a standard way to deal with this? It seems to me that I need to (a) split the GEOLEV1 shapefile in half via the Prime Meridian, (b) alter the latitude extent on the LHS chunk the shapefile (west of the Prime Meridian) to run 180 to 360 rather than -180 to 0, and then (c) merge the halfs together again, but with the previously-LHS half now to the right, so that latitude runs from 0 to 180 to 360, in order to match with my climate data.
However, maybe that’s incredibly inefficient, and there is an easier way to tackle this problem? I imagine I’m not the first R-user to encounter this barrier? Thanks in advance for your help!