High-Resolution Meteorological Forcing Data for Hydrological Modelling and Climate Change Impact Analysis over most of North America, 1951-2100

This dataset provides an improved set of forcing data for large scale hydrological models for climate change impacts assessment over most of North America. The gridded data from the high-resolution forecasts of the Global Environmental Multiscale (GEM) atmospheric model and outputs of the Canadian Precipitation Analysis (CaPA), have a short historical record. The EU WATCH ERA-Interim reanalysis (WFDEI) has a longer historical record at a lower resolution (0.5°) and has often been found to be biased relative to observations over Canada. The strengths of both datasets (GEM-CaPA and WFDEI) were blended to produce a less-biased long record product (WFDEI-GEM-CaPA - http://doi.org/10.20383/101.0111) for hydrological modelling and climate change impacts assessment. This product is then used to bias-correct climate projections from the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis Canadian Regional Climate Model (CanRCM4) between 1951–2100 under Representative Concentration Pathway— RCP8.5, and an analysis of the datasets shows the biases in the original WFDEI product have been removed and the climate change signals in CanRCM4 are preserved. The resulting bias-corrected data (CanRCM4-WFDEI-GEM-CaPA 3h*0.125ᵒ resolution) are a consistent set of historical and climate projection data suitable for large-scale modelling and future climate scenario analysis. Data reflects the meteorology at 40m height above ground for wind speed, temperature, and specific humidity.