[Python] Remove pandas rows with duplicate indices

How to remove rows with duplicate index values?

In the weather DataFrame below, sometimes a scientist goes back and corrects observations -- not by editing the erroneous rows, but by appending a duplicate row to the end of a file.

I'm reading some automated weather data from the web (observations occur every 5 minutes, and compiled into monthly files for each weather station.) After parsing a file, the DataFrame looks like:

Sta Precip1hr Precip5min Temp DewPnt WindSpd WindDir AtmPress
Date
2001-01-01 00:00:00 KPDX 0 0 4 3 0 0 30.31
2001-01-01 00:05:00 KPDX 0 0 4 3 0 0 30.30
2001-01-01 00:10:00 KPDX 0 0 4 3 4 80 30.30
2001-01-01 00:15:00 KPDX 0 0 3 2 5 90 30.30
2001-01-01 00:20:00 KPDX 0 0 3 2 10 110 30.28


Example of a duplicate case:

import pandas as pd
import datetime

startdate = datetime.datetime(2001, 1, 1, 0, 0)
enddate = datetime.datetime(2001, 1, 1, 5, 0)
index = pd.date_range(start=startdate, end=enddate, freq='H')
data1 = {'A' : range(6), 'B' : range(6)}
data2 = {'A' : [20, -30, 40], 'B' : [-50, 60, -70]}
df1 = pd.DataFrame(data=data1, index=index)
df2 = pd.DataFrame(data=data2, index=index[:3])
df3 = df2.append(df1)

df3
A B
2001-01-01 00:00:00 20 -50
2001-01-01 01:00:00 -30 60
2001-01-01 02:00:00 40 -70
2001-01-01 03:00:00 3 3
2001-01-01 04:00:00 4 4
2001-01-01 05:00:00 5 5
2001-01-01 00:00:00 0 0
2001-01-01 01:00:00 1 1
2001-01-01 02:00:00 2 2


And so I need df3 to eventually become:

A B
2001-01-01 00:00:00 0 0
2001-01-01 01:00:00 1 1
2001-01-01 02:00:00 2 2
2001-01-01 03:00:00 3 3
2001-01-01 04:00:00 4 4
2001-01-01 05:00:00 5 5


I thought that adding a column of row numbers (df3['rownum'] = range(df3.shape[0])) would help me select the bottom-most row for any value of the DatetimeIndex, but I am stuck on figuring out the group_by or pivot (or ???) statements to make that work.

Continue reading...