WEBSITE:

http://cses.washington.edu/picea/mauger/met30s/pub/

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SUMMARY:

This directory contains downscaled meteorological data (precip, tmax, and tmin) at 30-arcsecond 
	resolution, along with diagnostic plots for a few select years.

Meteorological data are archived for two regions:
	1) Western North America ("wna") -- Pac NW, BC, and AK panhandle
	2) Pacific Northwest ("pnw")	 -- Pacific Northwest (Columbia river basin + coastal 
					    drainages up to 49N)

	'downscaled' to 30-arcsecond resolution using the 1971-2000 climate normals from either
	climateWNA (wna) or PRISM (pnw). The PRISM data are likely to be of a better quality
	than that from climateWNA.

For more about the source dataset (generated at 1/16th degree for the Columbia Basin Climate 
	Change Scenarios Project -- CBCCSP), an overview, in-depth report and a substantial 
	online archive of the data are all available here:
	http://www.hydro.washington.edu/2860/

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DIRECTORY STRUCTURE:

The results for each region are stored in separate directories, named as follows:
	pnw_30s -- results for the pnw region at 30 arc-seconds
	wna_30s -- results for the wna region at 30 arc-seconds

Each of the above directories contains 3 subdirectories, one each for historical, and the future
	hybrid delta and transient (BCSD) downscalings (note: more information on the formulation 
	of each of these can be found at the CBCCSP link listed above):

1) Transient runs: 
	These are the primary focus of this dataset. 

	The transient runs take the year-to-year and month-to-month time series from the GCMs, 
	bias corrected to a reference historical period -- in this case, 1971-2000.

	These runs go from 1950 to ~2099

2) Hybrid Delta runs: 
	These are included as a reference for comparison with the transient runs. 

	The hybrid delta runs use the *daily* historical time series, and apply the changes in
	the probability distribution from the GCM. The GCM does not provide any information on 
	time evolution of temp/precip, only the probability distribution is taken from the GCM.

	These runs go from 1915(pnw) or 1950(wna) to 2006

3) WRF runs:
	These are included as a reference for comparison with the statistically downscaled data
	listed above (Hybrid Delta, Transient).

	These result from a dynamical downscaling of GCM data, in which a regional climate model
	is run at a high resolution. The boundaries of the regional model are forced by the GCM.
	In the present case, the regional model is the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)
	model.

	These runs span 3 periods: 1970-2000, 2010-2040, 2040-2070.

4) Historical:
	These are simply a gridded product formed using the historic weather observations as 
	a basis.

	I've included this as a baseline for evaluating changes predicted by the hybrid delta 
	downscaling -- this is the same time series that is used as the basis for the hybrid 
	delta runs.

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SUBDIRECTORIES:

Each 'run' directory contains two sub-directories:
	monthly_asc_files -- containing a gridded arc-ascii file for each variable, year, and 
			     month in the simulation, in addition to annual and decadal summaries.
	monthly_asc_plots -- containing diagnostic plots for a few select years / months.

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ARC-ASCII FORMAT:

The arc-ascii format is readable by ArcInfo (see ESRI help website for information). Each file 
	in this dataset has the followng 6-line header which defines the grid:

ncols		1771
nrows		937
xllcenter	-124.65
yllcenter	41.2
cellsize	0.008333333
NODATA_value	-9999

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FILE NAMING CONVENTION:

The file naming convention is:

<variable name>.<downscaling method>.<GCM>_<scenario>_<timeperiod>.<year>.<mo>.asc

e.g.:
tmin_monthly_avg.tr.ccsm3_A1B.1979.07.asc (transient run)
or
tmax_monthly_avg.hd.echam5_A1B_2070-2099.1979.07.asc (hybrid delta run)
or
precip_monthly_tot.historic.1979.07.asc (historic run)

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CONTACT:

Feel free to send any questions my way, at:

gmauger at uw dot edu
(206)685-0317

Guillaume Mauger
Climate Impacts Group
JISAO / UW Seattle