Water Balance Model Inputs and Outputs for the Conterminous United States, 1900-2015

This metadata record describes monthly input and output data covering the period 1900-2015 for a water-balance model described in McCabe and Wolock (2011). The input datasets are precipitation (PPT) and air temperature (TAV) from the PRISM group at Oregon State University. The model outputs include estimated potential evapotranspiration (PET), actual evapotranspiration (AET), runoff (RUN) (streamflow per unit area), soil moisture storage (STO), and snowfall (SNO). The datasets are arranged in tables of monthly total or average values measured in millimeters or degrees C and then multiplied by 100. The data are indexed by the identifier PRISMID, which refers to an ASCII raster of cells in an associated file named PRISMID.asc. Water-balance model inputs and outputs also can be linked to a file (PRISMID_LL.csv) of latitude and longitude values in a separate comma separated data file based on PRISMID values.