VIC Model Outputs for the Colorado River Basin: Baseline and Experimental Simulations

This dataset contains mean of daily gridded outputs from the calibrated Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model version 5 for the Colorado River Basin. Spatial Domain: Colorado River Basin, 1/16° resolution (~6 km) Format: NetCDF (mean of daily timestep) Model Setup: VIC-5 with wet-bulb temperature precipitation partitioning (Wang et al., 2024) Forcing: PRISM daily precipitation and temperature merged with NLDAS wind speed Calibrated using SNOTEL observations and USBR naturalized streamflow Validated against SMAP soil moisture and GRACE water storage Contents: 1. vic_baseline_mean.nc Long-term temporal mean of daily VIC model outputs across the entire 40-year baseline period (1984-2023). 2. mean_climate_experiment.nc Ensemble mean across multiple climate forcing scenarios with identical initial conditions for Water Year 2020. 3. mean_initialsm_experiment.nc Ensemble mean across simulations with varying initial soil moisture conditions but identical climate forcing for Water Year 2020. 4. Combined Experiments 4.1 combination_vwetsm.nc Ensemble mean of climate scenarios initialized with very wet soil moisture conditions. 4.2 combination_wetsm.nc Ensemble mean of climate scenarios initialized with wet soil moisture conditions. 4.3 combination_avgsm.nc Ensemble mean of climate scenarios initialized with average soil moisture conditions. 4.4 combination_drysm.nc Ensemble mean of climate scenarios initialized with dry soil moisture conditions. 4.5 combination_vdrysm.nc Ensemble mean of climate scenarios initialized with very dry soil moisture conditions. Note for Climate Experiment: mean is from the output period of 2020-01-01 to 2020-09-30. To analyze complete Water Year 2020, combine with baseline outputs from 2019-10-01 to 2019-12-31 mean.