Metadata for Precipitation for 1981-2013 from Daymet Metadata for Precipitation for 1981-2013 from Daymet

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Identification Information:

Citation:

Originator: Montana Climate Office
Publication date: 02/11/2015
Title: Precipitation for 1981-2013 from Daymet
Online linkage: ftp://mco.cfc.umt.edu/prcp/Daymet/Readme.html

Browse graphic file name: http://mco.cfc.umt.edu/images/MCOPrecipNormalThumbnail.jpg
Browse graphic file description: Montana Climate Office Daymet precipitation yearly normal graphic
Browse graphic file type: JPEG

Abstract:

This raster dataset shows daily, monthly, yearly, monthly normal, and yearly normal maximum precipitation (rain plus melted snow) in millimeters with a grid cell resolution of 1000-meters (1-kilometer) for the years 1981-2013.

Purpose:

Gridded topographic-climatic datasets are increasingly used to drive many ecological and hydrological models and assess climate change impacts. These datasets can be an invaluable tool for spatially explicit ecological and hydrological modelling, for facilitating better end-user understanding, and for advancing community-driven model improvements. Daymet is a gridded data set of estimates of daily weather parameters for North America. Available weather parameters include daily continuous surfaces of minimum and maximum temperature, precipitation occurrence and amount, humidity, and shortwave radiation. The daily time step, a 1-km x 1-km spatial resolution, and North American spatial extent of the data set makes it a unique and valuable contribution to scientific, research, and educational communities. See the Daymet homepage at http://daac.ornl.gov/Daymet/Daymet.shtml for detailed information. The Daymet dataset has been broadly applied over a wide variety of scientific and research fields including hydrology, terrestrial vegetation growth models, carbon cycle science, and regional to continental climate change analyses. Daymet products are distributed in a public 1000-meter grid format in a World Geographic Coordinate System (WGS84) Lambert Conformal Conic projection for the conterminous United States. The Montana Climate Office redistributes this product in both geotiff and Esri geodatabase format in a Montana State Plane NAD83 projection with a 1000-meter grid. Input requirements for the Daymet model include a digital elevation model and daily observations of maximum and minimum temperature, and precipitation from ground-based weather stations. The Daymet method is based on the spatial convolution of a truncated Gaussian weighting filter with the set of station locations. Sensitivity to the typical heterogeneous distribution of stations in complex terrain is accomplished with an interactive station density algorithm. In the Daymet algorithm, spatially and temporally explicit analysis of the relationships of temperature and precipitation to elevation are performed.

Supplemental information:

Processed from NetCDF raster file source using Python 2.7 code maintained by the Montana Climate Office.

Time period of content:

Beginning date: 01/01/1981
Beginning time: 000000
Ending date: 12/31/2013
Currentness reference:: The bounding rectangle for all 4th-code NRCS hydrologic units that intersect with the boundary of the State of Montana.

Status:

Progress: Complete
Maintenance and update frequency: As needed

Access constraints: None

Use constraints:

The Montana Climate Office (MCO) provides this product/service for informational purposes only. The MCO did not produce it for, nor is it suitable for legal, engineering, or surveying purposes. Consumers of this information should review or consult the primary data and information sources to ascertain the viability of the information for their purposes. The MCO provides these data in good faith but does not represent or warrant its accuracy, adequacy, or completeness. In no event shall the MCO be liable for any incorrect results or analysis; any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages to any party; or any lost profits arising out of or in connection with the use or the inability to use the data or the services provided. The MCO makes these data and services available as a convenience to the public, and for no other purpose. The MCO reserves the right to change or revise published data and/or services at any time.

Point of contact:

State Climatologist
Director of Montana Climate Office
Montana Climate Office
32 Campus Drive
Missoula, Montana 59812-0576
Telephone: 406.243.6793
E-Mail: state.climatologist@umontana.edu

Point of contact:

Michael D. Sweet
Research and Information Systems Specialist
Montana Climate Office
32 Campus Drive
Missoula, Montana 59812-0576
Telephone: 406.243.5265
E-Mail: michael.sweet@umontana.edu

Data set credit:

The Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group (NTSG) research laboratory at the University of Montana (http://ntsg.umt.edu), the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (http://daac.ornl.gov/Daymet/Daymet.shtml) and the Montana Climate Office (http://climate.umt.edu/).

Thornton, P.E., M.M. Thornton, B.W. Mayer, N. Wilhelmi, Y. Wei, R. Devarakonda, and R.B. Cook. 2014. Daymet: Daily Surface Weather Data on a 1-km Grid for North America, Version 2. Data set. Available on-line [http://daac.ornl.gov] from Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. Date accessed: YYYY/MM/DD. Temporal range: YYYY/MM/DD-YYYY/MM/DD. Spatial range: N=DD.DD, S=DD.DD, E=DDD.DD, W=DDD.DD. http://dx.doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1219

Thornton, P.E., Running, S.W., White, M.A. 1997. Generating surfaces of daily meteorological variables over large regions of complex terrain. Journal of Hydrology 190: 214 - 251. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0022-1694(96)03128-9

Thornton, P.E. and S.W. Running. 1999. An improved algorithm for estimating incident daily solar radiation from measurements of temperature, humidity, and precipitation. Agriculture and Forest Meteorology. 93:211-228. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0168-1923(98)00126-9

Data Quality Information:

Logical consistency report:

Value range resulting from bilinear transformation to Montana State Plane projection is within expected range. NoData values are assigned where they existed in the source representation.

Completeness report:

Number of NoData items with respect to the total number of NoData that should have been present

Lineage:

Process step:: Daymet data projected to Montana State Plane NAD83 is extracted to an area-of-interest (ftp://mco.cfc.umt.edu/resources/MCO/Area-of-Interest/BoundariesMSP.gdb/area-of-interest) defined by the Montana Climate Office to encompass all major sub-basins that intersect with Montana's border. The Esri ArcGIS Spatial Analyst ExtractByMask_sa method is used. For the extract method, the source is used as a snap raster to maintain alignment of the grid cells. Pyramids are built for the result using Esri ArcGIS BuildPyramids_management method.
Process step:: Source at http://daymet.ornl.gov/thredds/fileServer/ornldaac/1219/tiles/ is programmatically downloaded and projected from NAD83 geographic coordinates to Montana State Plane NAD83 using the Esri ArcGIS ProjectRaster_management method. The method uses a bilinear transformation, with a raster cell size of 1000 meters, and registers the grid cell boundary at Montana State Plane coordinates [560648.266 436475.763].