A daily hydroclimatological data set for the continental United States

Journal Article · Mon Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1991 · Water Resources Research; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/91WR00977· OSTI ID:5534707

Wallis, J R ^[1]; Lettenmaier, D P ^[2]; Wood, E F ^[3]

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1. International Business Machines Corp., Yorktown Heights, NY (United States)
2. Univ. of Washington, Seattle (United States)
3. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)

Previous attempts to validate general circulation model simulations of land surface hydrology have often been limited by the absence of systematic historical data, especially for runoff, precipitation, and temperature. Because hydrological response times for unregulated watersheds in the United States vary from a few hours to a few days at most, climatological studies dealing with land surface hydrology require data at relatively short time intervals. The authors describe a set of 1,009 US Geological Survey streamflow stations, and 1,036 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climatological stations, for which long-term (1948-1988) observations have been assembled into a consistent daily data base with missing observations estimated using a simple closest-station prorating rule. Care was taken in selection of the streamflow stations to assure that the records were essentially free from regulation. The climatological stations are a subset of the historical climatology network for which development of alternative data retrieval algorithms. estimated values for missing data, as well as suspicious observations, are flagged. The data are retrievable by station list, state, latitude-longitude range, and hydrologic unit code from compact digital read-only memory (CD ROM). CD-ROM copies are available from D.P. Lettenmaier.

• DOE Contract Number: AC06-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 5534707
• Journal Information: Water Resources Research; (United States), Journal Name: Water Resources Research; (United States) Vol. 27:7; ISSN 0043-1397; ISSN WRERA
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
540110
540310* -- Environment
Aquatic-- Basic Studies-- (1990-)
58 GEOSCIENCES
580000 -- Geosciences
ALGORITHMS
ATMOSPHERIC PRECIPITATIONS
CLIMATES
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
DATA ACQUISITION
DATA ANALYSIS
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
ENVIRONMENTAL TRANSPORT
GENERAL CIRCULATION MODELS
HYDROLOGY
MASS TRANSFER
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
NORTH AMERICA
RUNOFF
SIMULATION
TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENT
TESTING
US DOI
US GS
US NOAA
US ORGANIZATIONS
USA
VALIDATION
WATERSHEDS