EPA Hourly Prognostic Meteorological Data for the Continental U.S., 2021-2023

Hourly outputs from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model generated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Air Quality Modeling Branch. The data covers the Continental United States at a 12-km resolution for the years 2021 through 2023 and is intended for air quality and dispersion modeling applications. Model-observation paired files are included to aid in performance evaluation for regulatory use.

Use Cases

• Running air quality dispersion models based on the high-resolution WRF model outputs.
• Translating meteorological data for regulatory modeling tools using the Mesoscale Model Interface (MMIF) tool.
• Evaluating model performance for regulatory compliance based on the included model-observation paired files.
• Analyzing continental-scale weather patterns for air quality applications based on the 12-km resolution data.

Strengths

• Data is generated at a 12-km resolution over the Continental United States.
• Covers a three-year time range from 2021 through 2023.
• Includes model-observation paired files to support performance evaluation.
• Individual files are less than 1GB in size, facilitating use in a Windows environment.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of State Air Partnerships, Air Quality Assessment Division, Air Quality Modeling Branch.

Collection Method

Outputs from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model.

Time Range

2021 through 2023.

Freshness

Data is anticipated to be updated annually, with the three most recent years available.

Geography

Continental United States (12US).