Identification

Title

Development of a large-sample watershed-scale hydrometeorological data set for the contiguous USA: Data set characteristics and assessment of regional variability in hydrologic model performancD

Abstract

We present a community data set of daily forcing and hydrologic response data for 671 small- to medium-sized basins across the contiguous United States (median basin size of 336 km2) that spans a very wide range of hydroclimatic conditions. Area-averaged forcing data for the period 1980-2010 was generated for three basin spatial configurations – basin mean, hydrologic response units (HRUs) and elevation bands – by mapping daily, gridded meteorological data sets to the subbasin (Daymet) and basin polygons (Daymet, Maurer and NLDAS). Daily streamflow data was compiled from the United States Geological Survey National Water Information System. The focus of this paper is to (1) present the data set for community use and (2) provide a model performance benchmark using the coupled Snow-17 snow model and the Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting Model, calibrated using the shuffled complex evolution global optimization routine. After optimization minimizing daily root mean squared error, 90% of the basins have Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency scores ≥0.55 for the calibration period and 34% ≥ 0.8. This benchmark provides a reference level of hydrologic model performance for a commonly used model and calibration system, and highlights some regional variations in model performance. For example, basins with a more pronounced seasonal cycle generally have a negative low flow bias, while basins with a smaller seasonal cycle have a positive low flow bias. Finally, we find that data points with extreme error (defined as individual days with a high fraction of total error) are more common in arid basins with limited snow and, for a given aridity, fewer extreme error days are present as the basin snow water equivalent increases.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d70g3m9k

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2015-01-14T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact