Texas climate, climate change, and impacts on inflows to bays and estuaries evaluated through the use of hydrologic model simulations driven by downscaled global climate model simulations and projections

Downscaled climate and hydrology projections, along with the corresponding historical observations, were acquired from UC Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s web service. One-sixteenth scale Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) projection sets of selected hydrological variables were acquired for all available runs of emissions paths RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. Chosen variables and parameters of the projections were shown to be most capable of predicting future trends in freshwater inflows along the Texas Gulf Coast, while allowing for the region’s seasonal specific precipitation trends.

Selected variables: average surface air temperature, baseflow, rainfall rate, runoff , soil moisture layer 1, actual evapotranspiration, potential evapotranspiration, and relative humidity.

Basin selection: Along-coast differences in climate are represented by differences in small coastal drainage basins surrounding Houston (northeast) and Kingsville (southwest). Along-coast differences in riverine inflows will be represented by the Sabine-Neches Rivers (northeast) and the Nueces River (southwest). Differences related to the size of drainage basins will be represented by the Lavaca River and the Brazos River, both of which discharge along the central Texas coast.

Representative basins: Houston area: Outlet cell: 29.812500,-95.062500 (Trib area ~10856 km^2) Latitude bounds: (29.5, 30.75) Longitude bounds: (-96.125, -95.0) Area within bounds: ~15039 km^2 Kingsville area: Outlet cell: 27.312500,-97.562500 (Trib area ~11479 km2) Latitude bounds: (27.125, 28.0) Longitude bounds: (-99.0, -97.5) Area within bounds: ~14387 km^2 Sabine-Neches: Outlet cell: 29.812500,-93.937500 (Trib area ~55454 km2) Latitude bounds: (29.75, 33.375) Longitude bounds: (-96.5, -93.125) Area within bounds: ~128880 km^2 Nueces: Outlet cell: 28.5625, -96.5625 (Trib area approx..40977 km2) Latitude bounds: (27.625, 30.125) Longitude bounds: (-100.5, -97.375) Area within bounds: ~84586 km^2 Lavaca: Outlet cell: 28.5625, -96.5625 (Trib area ~7083 km^2) Latitude bounds: (28.5, 29.75) Longitude bounds: (-97.25, -96.375) Area within bounds: ~11814 km^2 Brazos: Outlet cell: 30.4375, -96.3125 (Trib area ~ 102771 km^2); Latitude bounds: (30.375, 34.625) Longitude bounds: (-103.875, -96.25) Area within bounds: ~337,877 km^2. The dataset includes five R dataframes (.RData) and plots for each model run/location/variable combination, specifying the quantiles (10th to 90th) for each location and model run (.Bdf); the sum or average function for each location and model run (sRCP); a timeseries for each location and model run (.tsdf), quantiles (0:5:100) (.qnts), and daily to annual averaged values (.aRCP). Also included are a listing of the 32 numerical models considered and the code used to source and analyze the data.