Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

USDA Logo U.S. Department of Agriculture

Publication Details

Title:
Climate data for RPA 2020 Assessment: MACAv2 (METDATA) historical modeled (1950-2005) and future (2006-2099) projections for the conterminous United States at the 1/24 degree grid scale
Author(s):
Joyce, Linda A.; Abatzoglou, John T.; Coulson, David P.
Publication Year:
2018
How to Cite:
These data were collected using funding from the U.S. Government and can be used without additional permissions or fees. If you use these data in a publication, presentation, or other research product please use both of these citations:
Joyce, Linda A.; Abatzoglou, John T.; Coulson, David P. 2018. Climate data for RPA 2020 Assessment: MACAv2 (METDATA) historical modeled (1950-2005) and future (2006-2099) projections for the conterminous United States at the 1/24 degree grid scale. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2018-0014

Abatzoglou, John T.; Brown, Timothy J. 2012. A comparison of statistical downscaling methods suited for wildfire applications. International Journal of Climatology, 32: 772–780. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2312

For further clarity, unless otherwise noted, the MACA datasets are made available with a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal dedication. In short, John Abatzoglou waives all rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute, and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. John Abatzoglou makes no warranties about the work, and disclaims liability for all uses of the work, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law. (https://climate.northwestknowledge.net/MACA/MACAreferences.php)
Abstract:
The 2020 Resources Planning Act (RPA) Assessment will include climate change as a driver affecting natural resources on all forest and rangelands in the United States. These climate projections, along with projections for population dynamics, economic growth, and land use change in the United States, comprise the RPA scenarios. The climate scenarios are the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 and the downscaled climate data is the MACAv2-METDATA developed by Abatzoglou and Brown (2012) and Abatzoglou (2013). This downscaled climate data set covers the conterminous United States at the grid size of approximately 4 kilometers (1/24 degree) on a side. The data set includes downscaled historical model output (1950-2005) and projections (2006-2099) for both the RCP 4.5 and the RCP 8.5 scenarios for five models: HadGEM2-ES365, MRI-CGCM3, CNRM-CM5, IPSL-CM5A-MR, and NorESM1-M. The variables available include, monthly average of daily mean near-surface specific humidity (huss), mean daily mean potential evapotranspiration (pet), mean daily maximum relative humidity (rhmax), mean daily minimum relative humidity (rhmin), monthly average of daily surface downwelling shortwave radiation (rsds), mean daily maximum air temperature (tasmax), mean daily minimum air temperature (tasmin), and monthly average of daily mean near-surface wind speed (was). With two climate scenarios and five models, ten different climate futures are available.

Keywords:
climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere; Climate change; Climatology; monthly; precipitation; maximum temperature; minimum temperature; downwelling shortwave solar radiation; specific humidity; wind speed; potential evapotranspiration; minimum relative humidity; maximum relative humidity; CMIP5; gridded meteorological data; MACAv2; RPA Assessment; Resources Planning Act Assessment; conterminous United States
Related publications:
  • Abatzoglou, John T. 2013. Development of gridded surface meteorological data for ecological applications and modelling. International Journal of Climatology. 33: 121-131. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.3413
  • Abatzoglou, John T.; Brown, Timothy J. 2012. A comparison of statistical downscaling methods suited for wildfire applications. International Journal of Climatology. 32: 772-780. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2312
Metrics:
Visit count : 1365
Access count: 11
Download count: 162
More details
Data Access:

Need information about Using our Formats?