DATA AND FILES:

This page provides links to data files. These are provided for convenience of downloading related to specific projects or particular data requests, and are not fully explained here.

Library of Downscaled Climate Projections

A data set of 112 downscaled climate projections, based on output from 16 GCMs and 3 different SRES emissions scenarios (A2, A1B, B1) has been made available for public downloading. The spatial domain is shown in the figure, covering the conterminous US plus portions of Canada and Mexico. The resolution is 1/8 degree (~140 km² per grid cell). Raw monthly data for any region as well as summary statistics may be specified. The data set is formally introduced in AGU's Eos 88(47), 11/2007. Click here to be redirected to the web site, hosted by the Green Data Oasis. Streamflow was also derived as part of the USBR WaterSmart project, and is available here, with documentation here.

Much of this data for the U.S. is also served by the USGS Geo Data Portal, along with many other data sets, both of observations and downscaled climate projections.

Global Downscaled Data

Downscaled global CMIP3 GCM output are served here. This covers global land areas at a 1/2-degree (about 50 km) spatial resolution. A similar downscaled product using CMIP5 GCM runs is available here.

Both the global and US-wide datasets are included in the Climate Wizard: http://www.climatewizard.org. Both CMIP3 and CMIP5 globally downscaled data and analysis can be obtained at the Climate Wizard Custom website: http://climatewizardcustom.org/

Daily global downscaled data (0.25 degree spatial resolution) is available on the NASA NEX server: dataset information; data download.

Derived daily extreme statistics for CMIP3 projections are available here: http://climateknowledgeportal.climatewizard.org/, produced as part of an effort by the World Bank, described here: http://sdwebx.worldbank.org/climateportal. A document describing these data is here.

Gridded Observed Meteorological Data:

Link to new updated datasets: 1949-2010 (in process as of March 2011)

Note: it was identified that there is a spatial shift in the wind field in both the original 1949-1999 and in the updated 1/8-degree US-wide data served here. The interpolation placed the 10m winds approximately 1.5 degrees to the North and West. As these data sets are being updated at a finer resolution, no correction to these data sets are anticipated.

The link below brings you to directories of files of monthly or daily gridded observations at 1/8 degree spatial resolution (about 12 km). These are available in individual files for each year from 1950-1999. These are described in detail in the reference:

That should be referenced anytime this data set is used. The original binary format data for 1949-2000 are at the University of Washington site. The link below is to a set of 1950-1999 files reformatted into the common netCDF format, to be more compatible with climate model and other meteorological data formats, as well as the handy NCO Utilities and CDAT software. Files are named in the format:
gridded_obs.<timestep>.<variable>.<year>.nc
where <timestep> is "daily" or "monthly", <variable> is Tavg, Tmin, Tmax, Prcp, or Wind. See file headers for details.

Daily Files

Monthly Files

The newer 1/16 degree daily gridded data beginning in 1915 (see the Livneh et al., 2013 reference on the "Publications" page for documentation) are available here. This has also been expanded to include Mexico and Canada, and is available from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation here.

CA Governor's Project: 2005-06

I have completed the climate data downscaling for the selected GCMs, and generated daily and monthly climate data and hydrologic variables (soil moisture, snowpack, streamflow). Due to excessive data volume, these files are not available through this server, but may be obtained as described on a web page of the California Climate Change Center.

"PNAS" and other downscaled GCM data: Data from HadCM3 and PCM for SRES scenarios A1fi and B1, as used in the 2004 Hayhoe et al. PNAS paper. Other data is from the IPCC AR4 simulations.

NOTES: These netCDF files use months as the time step. Programs such as GrADS and ncview occasionally have difficulty correctly interpreting the times.

Data Updates:

Files (netcdf format, compressed with gzip) contain 10 years of monthly precipitation and air temperature data downscaled to a 1/8 degree spatial resolution. Files are named us_<model>.<scenario>.<timestep>.<variable>.<years>.nc.gz

• <model> is hadcm3, pcm or gfdl
• <scenario> is A1 (or sresa1fi) for A1fi case; B1 or sresb1
• <timestep> is monthly
• variable is Tavg (monthly average temperature) or Prcp (monthly accumulated precipitation)
• years defines the time period, e.g. 2040-2049. Decades from 1960-2099 are included for HadCM# and PCM, 1950-2099 for other GCMs.

Summary Plots of Differences between 1961-1990 and 2070-2099 averages (DJF (winter) = December-February; JJA (summer) = June-August):

Elevations (in meters) for each grid cell are included in the file here, in the Arc/INFO gridascii format.