ClimateWNA—High-Resolution Spatial Climate Data for Western North America

Abstract

his study addresses the need to provide comprehensive historical climate data and climate change projections at a scale suitable for, and readily accessible to, researchers and resource managers. This database for western North America (WNA) includes over 20 000 surfaces of monthly, seasonal, and annual climate variables from 1901 to 2009; several climate normal periods; and multimodel climate projections for the 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s. A software package, ClimateWNA, allows users to access the database and query point locations, obtain time series, or generate custom climate surfaces at any resolution. The software uses partial derivative functions of temperature change along elevation gradients to improve medium-resolution baseline climate estimates and calculates biologically relevant climate variables such as growing degree-days, number of frost-free days, extreme temperatures, and dryness indices. Historical and projected future climates are obtained by using monthly temperature and precipitation anomalies to adjust the interpolated baseline data for the location of interest. All algorithms used in the software package are described and evaluated against observations from weather stations across WNA. The downscaling algorithms substantially improve the accuracy of temperature variables over the medium-resolution baseline climate surfaces. Climate variables that are usually calculated from daily data are estimated from monthly climate variables with high statistical accuracy.