Production of a Catchment-Based Hydrometeorological Forcing Data Set for North America
Aaron A. Berg, James S. Famiglietti, Jeffrey P. Walker and Paul R. Houser
A fifteen-year catchment-based, bias-reduced hydrometeorological forcing dataset has been developed for North America, with an average catchment size of 4400km2. The spatial domain will be extended to provide global coverage in the near future. The data set, which extends from 01/1979 - 12/1993, includes four observations per day of the following fields; two meter air and dew point temperatures, ten meter wind speed, convective and total precipitation, long and short-wave downward radiation, and surface pressure. Production of the dataset required merging the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) re-analysis fields with observations to minimize bias and conserve monthly averages/totals. Monthly observation datasets incorporated into this product include; the NCAR Northern Hemisphere Sea Level Pressures, the Climate Research Unit (University of East Anglia) Temperature and Precipitation, the Center for Climatic Research (University of Delaware) Terrestrial Temperature and Precipitation, the Global Precipitation Climatology Project, and the Langley Eight Year Shortwave and Longwave Surface Radiation Budget. The procedures used to correct each of the forcing fields will be presented. The resulting data set provides consistent, long-term forcing fields for use in large-scale, catchment based hydrometeorological simulations.