Date created: | Last Updated:

Category: Project

Description: This dataset contains hydrometeorological and hydroclimatological data for 3540 watersheds in North America. The dataset contains four main parts: (a) Observed hydrometeorological data including daily streamflow observations, precipitation, minimum temperature and maximum temperature; (b) 20 bias-corrected climate model projections for 2 Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios and 5 bias-correction methods; (c) hydrological model calibration parameters and simulated streamflow for 4 hydrological models, 2 objective functions and 10 calibration parameter sets for the reference period; and (d) hydrological simulations for each of the combinations of the abovementioned elements of the climate change impact study chain, for a total of 16000 combinations. The dataset also contains simulations and bias-corrected climate for 30-year horizons corresponding to 1.5°C and 2°C temperature increases for a subset of the climate models, for an additional 8000 combinations. All simulations in the reference period are also provided. 51 pre-computed hydrological indices are made available for each simulation. Overall, 2.89 trillion years of simulations are classified, analyzed, compressed and made available for all researchers. This dataset can be used to evaluate the uncertainty of various components in the impact study chain, to establish relationships between catchment properties and hydrological response to climate change and to evaluate the spatial distribution of hydrological change according to a multitude of hydrological indices. Please see the associated publication in Water Resources Research: Arsenault, R., Brissette, F., Chen, J., Guo, Q. and Dallaire, G., 2020. NAC2H: The North American Climate Change and Hydroclimatology Data Set. Water Resources Research, 56(8), p.e2020WR027097. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020WR027097