NOAA National Water Model: Multi-Decade Continental US Hydrological Simulations

Multi-decade retrospective simulations for the contiguous US (CONUS) from 1979 to 2023, with separate versions covering different periods. The dataset contains input and output from the NOAA National Water Model, including hourly streamflow and 3-hourly land surface data. It is provided by NOAA and is available in NetCDF and Zarr formats.

Use Cases

• Providing historical context for current near real-time streamflow, soil moisture, and snowpack conditions based on the dataset's multi-decade simulations.
• Inferring flow frequencies and performing temporal analyses based on the hourly streamflow output.
• Developing end-user applications that require a long baseline of data for system training or verification purposes.

Strengths

• Covers a 44-year period (February 1979 through January 2023) for the most recent model version.
• Includes simulations for four distinct model versions (v1.2, v2.0, v2.1, v3.0), allowing for comparative analysis.
• Provides coverage for Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico/US Virgin Islands domains in version 3.0.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The output frequency and fields differ from the real-time operational NWM forecast model.

Provenance

Source

NOAA

Collection Method

Multi-decade retrospective simulations of the National Water Model using meteorological forcing datasets like AORC and NLDAS.

Time Range

1979-2023 (coverage varies by model version).

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Contiguous United States (CONUS), with v3.0 also covering Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico/US Virgin Islands.