Summary Layers for the NPS Gridded Water Balance Model

This page provides 30-year average and decadal average Water Balance GIS layers calculated for all of the Continental United States at 1km resolution. THERE ARE ABOUT 1700 GIS LAYERS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD FROM THIS WEB PAGE (about 160 GB). More detailed daily and monthly data (about 24 TB) from this model can be accessed via a THREDDS server located here. More information on how the model was calculated, the different versions of the model, projection information, and definitions for the water balance parameters (listed below) are available in this user guide.

Time periods included: Historical (1980 - present), and 24 futures (see below) out to late 21st century. These summary layers include annual values averaged over the time periods indicated as well as seasonal values for each year in the time periods indicated: Winter (December, January, February), Spring (March, April, May), Summer (June, July, August), and Fall (September, October, November).

Some terminology: Future data are divided into RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5, which are emissions scenarios. More information on RCPs is available here. Abbreviations in the filenames indicate the General Circulation Model (GCM) that provided the input temperature and precipitation data for the water balance run. There are 12 GCMs x 2 RCPs = 24 futures. If you just want a single future, then use the ENSEMBLE files, which are averages of the 12 GCMs in each RCP.

File Formats Provided Here: Geotiff. These are designed to be opened in a GIS program like ArcGIS or QGIS. Files in the "images" folders (jpg format) are just automatically generated previews of the GIS data.

Units for all files: Millimeters.

Use the links below to browse individual data files for each parameter. If for some reason you want a lot of files, it will be quicker to download the zip-archived versions here.

/AET

/Deficit

/PET

/accumswe

/rain

/runoff

/soil_water