Reading CSV Files

Reading CSV Files#

CSV (Comma-Separated Values) files are a common format for station observations, climate indices, or manually processed data. They are simple text files organized in rows and columns and can be read using the pandas library.

📥 Reading a CSV File#

Here’s how to read a CSV file using pandas:

import pandas as pd

# Read a simple CSV file
df = pd.read_csv("../data/precip_timeseries.csv")

# Display the first few rows
print(df.head())

🧠 Tips#

  • Use parse_dates=['date'] if your file includes timestamps.

  • Use index_col='date' if you want to treat the date as the DataFrame index.

  • Use sep="\t" or delimiter=',' to adjust for tab-delimited or nonstandard formats.

CSV is ideal for small datasets and quick exploratory work.

Contents