Sub-Daily Climate Forcings for Puerto Rico at 1-km Resolution

Weather forcing data provides 3-hourly historic climate variables at 1-km spatial resolution for Puerto Rico and surrounding islands. The dataset blends daily Daymet V4 observations with sub-daily temporal patterns from GSWP3 and NARR reanalysis, resulting in two blended time series covering 1950-2014 and 1979 2019. It is produced by NASA to support high-resolution land surface modeling.

Use Cases

• Forcing high-resolution land surface models with variables like surface air temperature, precipitation, and specific humidity.
• Analyzing sub-daily climate extremes and diurnal cycles using 3-hourly wind speed and radiation data.
• Calibrating regional climate models by comparing blended Daymet-GSWP3 and Daymet-NARR reanalysis outputs.
• Studying long-term climate trends in Puerto Rico from 1950 onward using the gridded temperature and precipitation records.

Strengths

• Offers high spatial resolution at 1-km grid cells for detailed regional analysis.
• Provides high temporal resolution with 3-hourly time steps, derived from blending daily observations with reanalysis data.
• Covers a long temporal range, with the widest potential coverage spanning from 1950 to 2019 across two blended products.

Limitations

• Conflicting metadata exists: one platform lists a last update date of 2026-03-12, while another lists 2019 -12-31, creating uncertainty about maintenance.
• Specific technical details like total row count, file size, and exact column structure are not provided across any source.
• License information is inconsistent, listed as 'other-license-specified' on some platforms but 'None' on others.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Temporal downscaling of daily Daymet V4 observations using sub-daily patterns from GSWP3 and NARR meteorological reanalysis datasets.

Time Range

1950-2019

Freshness

2026-03-12 22:11:10.865442

Geography

Puerto Rico and surrounding islands.