A Long-Term Hydrologically Based Dataset of Land Surface Fluxes and States for the Conterminous United States: Update and Extensions

TLDR

The prior dataset has been widely used for water and energy budget studies, climate change assessments, drought reconstructions, and other purposes. This paper presents a publicly available, long‑term (1915–2011) hydrologically consistent dataset for the conterminous United States to support studies of land‑surface water and energy exchanges. The dataset is gridded at a fine spatial resolution, derived from daily observations of temperature, precipitation, and wind at ~20,000 NOAA COOP stations, with additional variables estimated via algorithms and disaggregated to 3‑hourly intervals, and the VIC model is used to generate 3‑hourly soil moisture, snow water equivalent, discharge, and surface heat flux estimates. Compared to the earlier dataset, the new version extends the record to 1915–2011, improves spatial resolution, and uses an updated VIC model, offering enhanced temporal and spatial detail that should benefit a broad scientific community.

Abstract

This paper describes a publicly available, long-term (1915–2011), hydrologically consistent dataset for the conterminous United States, intended to aid in studies of water and energy exchanges at the land surface. These data are gridded at a spatial resolution of [Formula: see text] latitude/longitude and are derived from daily temperature and precipitation observations from approximately 20 000 NOAA Cooperative Observer (COOP) stations. The available meteorological data include temperature, precipitation, and wind, as well as derived humidity and downwelling solar and infrared radiation estimated via algorithms that index these quantities to the daily mean temperature, temperature range, and precipitation, and disaggregate them to 3-hourly time steps. Furthermore, the authors employ the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model to produce 3-hourly estimates of soil moisture, snow water equivalent, discharge, and surface heat fluxes. Relative to an earlier similar dataset by Maurer and others, the improved dataset has 1) extended the period of analysis (1915–2011 versus 1950–2000), 2) increased the spatial resolution from ⅛° to [Formula: see text], and 3) used an updated version of VIC. The previous dataset has been widely used in water and energy budget studies, climate change assessments, drought reconstructions, and for many other purposes. It is anticipated that the spatial refinement and temporal extension will be of interest to a wide cross section of the scientific community.