USGS Hydro-Climatic Data Network (HCDN): Monthly Climate Database, 1951-1990

Summary:

Time series of monthly minimum and maximum temperature, precipitation, and potential evapotranspiration were derived for 1337 watersheds in the conterminous United States for sites in the national streamflow database, termed the Hydro-Climatic Data Network (HCDN), developed by Slack et al. (1993a,b). Estimates were derived for the years 1951-1990.

This HCDN data set consists of records of average daily streamflow at 1553 sites located throughout the United States. The data meet certain measurement accuracy criterion outlined by Slack et al. (1993). The HCDN contains river flows from 1874 to 1988, with an average record length of 44 years. The streamflow data included in the HCDN is purported to be relatively free from anthropogenic influences and the accuracy ratings of these records are at least rated good per USGS standards. A subset of the HCDN streamflow sites from 1337 watersheds with at least 10 years of record length was used. This subset includes 1376 HCDN sites.

The climate characteristic estimates of temperature and precipitation were estimated using the PRISM (Daly et al. 1994, 1997) climate analysis system as described in Vogel, et al. 1999.

Estimates of monthly potential evaporation were obtained using a method introduced by Hargreaves and Samani (1982) which is based on monthly time series of average minimum and maximum temperature data along with extraterrestrial solar radiation. Extraterrestrial solar radiation was estimated for each HCDN basin by computing the solar radiation over 0.1 degree grids using the method introduced by Duffie and Beckman (1980) and then summing those estimates for each river basin. This process is described in Sankarasubramanian, Vogel, and Limbrunner, 2001.

The data files are organized in directories by parameter, Tmax, Tmin, Pre, and PET, and contain 18 subdirectories representing the 18 Water Resources Council  regions for the conterminous United States. Each region subdirectory contains data files for the monthly time series of respective hydroclimate attributes (Tmax, Tmin, Precipitation, and PET) for the individual HCDN sites in that region for the years 1951-1990. All files are in space delimited ASCII format.

Data Citation:

Cite this data set as follows:

Vogel, R. M., and A.Sankarasubramanian. 2005. USGS Hydro-Climatic Data Network (HCDN): Monthly Climate Database, 1951-1990. Data set. Available on-line [http://www.daac.ornl.gov] from Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, U.S.A. doi:10.3334/ORNLDAAC/810.

References:

Daly, C., Neilson, R. P., and Phillips, D. L. (1994). A statistical-topographic model for mapping climatological precipitation over mountainous terrain. J. Appl. Meteorology, 33(2), 140-158.

Daly, C., Taylor, G., and Gibson, W. (1997). The PRISM approach to mapping precipitation and temperature. Proc., 10th AMS Conf. on Appl. Climatology, American Meteorological Society, Boston, Mass.

Duffie, J. A., and W. A. Beckman. 1980. Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes. John Wiley, New York, pp. 1-109.

Hargreaves, G. H., and Z. A. Samani. 1982. Estimating potential evapotranspiration, J. Irrig. Drain. Eng., 108(3), 225-230.

Sankarasubramanian, A., and R. M. Vogel. 2002. Annual hydroclimatology of the United States. Water Resources Res., 38(6), 1083, doi:10.1029/ 2001WR000619.

Sankarasubramanian, A., R. M. Vogel, and J. F. Limbrunner. 2001. Climate elasticity of streamflow in the United States. Water Resources Res., 37(6), doi:10.1029/2000WR900330.

Slack, J. R., A. M. Lumb, and J. M. Landwehr. 1993a. Hydroclimatic data network (HCDN): A U.S. Geological Survey streamflow data set for the United States for the study of climate variation, 1874-1988. Water Resour. Invest. Rep., 93-4076.

Slack, J. R., A. Lumb, and J. M. Landwehr. 1993b. Hydro-Climatic Data Network (HCDN) Streamflow Data Set, 1874-1998. CD-ROM. U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia, U.S.A. Available from Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, U.S.A. [http://www.daac.ornl.gov].

Vogel, R. M., I. Wilson, and C. Daly. 1999. Regional regression models of annual streamflow for the United States, J. Irrig. Drainage Eng., 125(3), 148-157.

Data Format:

The data files are organized in directories by parameter, Tmax, Tmin, Pre, and PET, and contain 18 subdirectories representing the 18 Water Resources Council regions (Region--, -- represents the region number). See description below.

Each region subdirectory contains data files for the monthly time series of respective hydroclimate attributes (Tmax, Tmin, Precipitation, and PET) for the individual HCDN sites in that region for the years 1951-1990. All files are in space delimited ASCII format.

 

Parameter	Description and Units
Pre	Precipitation in mm/month
PET	Potential evapotranspiration in mm/day   (day or month?)
Tmax	Average maximum monthly temperature in tenths of degree   Celsius (e.g., -40.6250 *0.1 = -4.06250 degree Celsius)
Tmin	Average minimum monthly temperature in tenths of degree Celsius (e.g., see Tmax)

Example data records:  Maximum Temperature for Region 10, Station 6019500.  File name:  6019500.tmax

Columns:      Station  Year  Jan  Feb  Mar  Apr  May  Jun  Jul  Aug  Sep  Oct  Nov  Dec

6019500 1951 -40.6250 13.8750 16.0625 100.7500 157.4375 159.8750 255.8125 218.8125 184.7500 84.8125 20.7500 -44.1875    6019500 1952 -34.0625 -10.5625 7.1875 116.8125 155.1250 203.9375 241.0000 247.1875 226.5000 165.3750 5.0000 -11.3750 ...    6019500 1989 -21.8750 -58.4375 46.6875 109.6250 145.1250 203.6250 272.8125 223.6250 198.4375 103.5000 46.5000 -0.8750    6019500 1990 -2.3125 2.1250 55.3125 122.8125 135.7500 196.4375 254.8125 247.0000 239.4375 111.3750 47.1250 -64.6875

Companion Files

A companion file of detailed HCDN watershed characteristics (HCDN_watershed_characteristics.csv) and a documentation file (hcdn_watershed_char_desc.pdf) are provided.

The companion file Selected_HCDN_station_20050601.csv is an extraction of the 1376 HCDN sites presented in this data set from the master HCDN station data file. Format and content descriptions are contained in the documentation file hcdn_stations_fmt_desc.pdf.

Water Resources Council Regions

The first two digits of the Hydrologic Units Codes (HUC) specify the Water Resources Council region. See list below.

The United States was divided and sub-divided into successively smaller hydrologic units. The first level of classification divides the U.S. into 21 water-resources regions. For a more comprehensive explanation of the hydrologic units refer to "Hydrologic units, hydrologic unit codes, and hydrologic unit names" ( http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/ofr92-129/files/hucs.html ).

The gray lines are state lines, the blue lines are major rivers, and the white lines are

water-resources region boundary lines. This data set only has data for the 18 regions of

the conterminous United States.

Region 01:  New England
Region 02:   Mid-Atlantic
Region 03:   South Atlantic-Gulf
Region 04:   Great Lakes
Region 05:   Ohio
Region 06:   Tennessee
Region 07:   Upper Mississippi
Region 08:   Lower Mississippi
Region 09:   Souris-Red-Rainy
Region 10:   Missouri
Region 11:   Arkansas-White-Red
Region 12:   Texas-Gulf
Region 13:   Rio Grande
Region 14:   Upper Colorado
Region 15:   Lower Colorado
Region 16:   Great Basin
Region 17:   Pacific Northwest
Region 18:   California
Region 19:   Alaska
Region 20:   Hawaii
Region 21:   Caribbean
 

Document Information:

Document Revision Date:

2005/3/14

Document Review Date:

2005/3/14

Document Curator:

webmaster@www.daac.ornl.gov

Document URL:

http://daac.ornl.gov/HYDROCLIMATOLOGY/guides/hcdn_monthly_hydroclim.html