Read Matlab file as raster in R

Question

I have a .mat file I got from someone, and it's supposed to represent global gridded data. I wanted to read it as a raster in R.

Importing was ok, I was able to import using the R.matlab package

> library(R.matlab)
> library(raster)
> 
> data <- readMat("map.mat")
> str(data)
List of 1
 $ comData: num [1:360, 1:720] NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN ...
 - attr(*, "header")=List of 3
  ..$ description: chr "MATLAB 5.0 MAT-file, Platform: PCWIN64, Created on: Mon May 11 09:17:06 2015                                        "
  ..$ version    : chr "5"
  ..$ endian     : chr "little"

I would have expected at least three lists, with longitude, latitude, and the data. However, it appears to only have one list comData. I have never imported data from Matlab, I am fairly new with GIS, so probably I am missing something. How can I read this dataset as a raster?

Answer 1

I'm making some wild assumptions here, but what does this look like:

library(raster)
mapmap <- raster(data$comData, 
                 xmn = -180, xmx = 180, ymn = -90, ymx = 90, 
                 crs = CRS('+init=EPSG:4283'))
plot(mapmap)

Does it plot sensibly?