North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program Data

The North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) is a collection of regional climate model simulations downscaling global simulations from CMIP3 to 50-km resolution over North America. The collection was generated in 2007-2012 with the goal of investigating uncertainties in regional scale projections of future climate and generating climate change scenarios for use in impacts research.

NARCCAP comprises a set 12 simulations from 6 RCMs downscaling 4 GCMs using a fractional factorial design, plus 1 simulation from each RCM downscaling the NCEP reanalysis, and 2 global atmosphere-only timeslice experiments. Historical data spans 1971-2000, and future data 2041-2070 using the SRES A2 emissions scenario. It includes more than 3 dozen 2D variables and a half-dozen 3D variables at 3-hourly frequencies, plus a handful of static and daily variables. All data is at 50-km spatial resolution over a domain that covers most of North America and is stored in CF-compliant netCDF files.

More detailed documentation of the dataset is available at: https://narccap.ucar.edu

To Access Resource:

Questions? Email Resource Support Contact:

  • datahelp@ucar.edu

Temporal Range

  • Begin:  1968-01-01T0000+00
    End:  2071-01-01T0600+00

Keywords

Resource Type dataset
Temporal Range Begin 1968-01-01T0000+00
Temporal Range End 2071-01-01T0600+00
Temporal Resolution N/A
Bounding Box North Lat 72.99521151740305
Bounding Box South Lat 12.55699999999999
Bounding Box West Long -168.36020646701036
Bounding Box East Long -25.80824304047718
Spatial Representation grid
Spatial Resolution 52000.0 m
47000.0 m
49000.0 m
Related Links N/A
Additional Information N/A
Resource Format NetCDF
Standardized Resource Format NetCDF
Asset Size 38546446.289 MB
Legal Constraints

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Access Constraints None
Software Implementation Language N/A

Resource Support Name N/A
Resource Support Email datahelp@ucar.edu
Resource Support Organization N/A
Distributor NSF NCAR Geoscience Data Exchange
Metadata Contact Name N/A
Metadata Contact Email datahelp@ucar.edu
Metadata Contact Organization NSF NCAR Geoscience Data Exchange

Author Mearns, Linda O.
McGinnis, Seth
Bukovsky, Melissa
McDaniel, Larry
Middleton, Don
Nychka, Doug
Sain, Steve
Arritt, Ray
Gutowski, William
Flory, Dave
Takle, Gene
Caya, Daniel
Biner, Sebastien
Duffy, Phil
Bader, Dave
Held, Isaac
Jones, Richard
Moufouma-Okia, Wilfran
Laprise, Rene
Leung, Ruby
Qian, Yun
Nunes, Ana
Roads, John
Sloan, Lisa
Snyder, Mark
Publisher NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research
Publication Date 2025-09-24
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
Alternate Identifier d316015
Resource Version N/A
Topic Category climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere
Progress completed
Metadata Date 2025-10-09T01:46:47Z
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.gdex::d316015
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Mearns, Linda O., McGinnis, Seth, Bukovsky, Melissa, McDaniel, Larry, Middleton, Don, Nychka, Doug, Sain, Steve, Arritt, Ray, Gutowski, William, Flory, Dave, Takle, Gene, Caya, Daniel, Biner, Sebastien, Duffy, Phil, Bader, Dave, Held, Isaac, Jones, Richard, Moufouma-Okia, Wilfran, Laprise, Rene, Leung, Ruby, Qian, Yun, Nunes, Ana, Roads, John, Sloan, Lisa, Snyder, Mark. (2025). North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program Data. NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research. https://gdex.ucar.edu/datasets/d316015. Accessed 10 October 2025.

Harvest Source