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USGS monthly water balance model inputs and outputs for the conterminous United States, 1895-2020, based on ClimGrid data

Published by U.S. Geological Survey | Department of the Interior | Metadata Last Checked: July 16, 2025 | Last Modified: 20240223
This NetCDF represents the monthly inputs and outputs from a United States Geological Survey water-balance model (McCabe and Wolock, 2011) for the conterminous United States for the period 1895-01-01 to 2020-12-31. The source data used to run the water balance model is based on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's(Vose and others, 2020) ClimGrid data for precipitation and temperature. This NetCDF contains the following monthly inputs: temperature (degrees Celsius) and precipitation (millimeters, mm) and the following outputs (all in mm): runoff, soil moisture storage, actual evapotranspiration, potential evapotranspiration, snow water equivalent, and snowfall. The spatial reference for this data set is ESPG 4326. References: Vose, Russell S., and others, Improved Historical Temperature and Precipitation Time Series for U.S. Climate Divisions, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, vol. 53, issue 5, ppg. 1232-1251, DOI: 10.1175/JAMC-D-13-0248.1. McCabe, Greg, Wolock, David M., Independent effects of temperature and precipitation on modeled runoff in the conterminous United States, Water Resources Research, volume 47, issue 11, November 2011, DOI: 10.1029/2011WR010630. First posted - January 27, 2022 Revision posted - February 29, 2024 Changes in version 2.0 It was found that very low numbers from the source water balance data resulted in the netcdf to report NODATA. Scaling factors were incorporated into the netcdf which retain these very low numbers and substantially increases throughput for more complex, arithmetic-dominated analysis such as weighted-averaging of multi-dimensional data and helps minimize storage space.

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