VEMAP 1: U.S. Climate Normals and Characteristic Year, 1961-1990

VEMAP Phase I provides a foundational climate dataset for the conterminous United States, created for ecosystem model intercomparison. It includes long-term monthly, seasonal, and annual climatological means for temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, humidity, and wind speed, as well as a synthetic daily 'characteristic year' that preserves realistic weather variances. The data supports analysis of biogeochemical and biogeographical responses to environmental drivers like climate change and elevated CO2.

Use Cases

• Intercomparing biogeochemistry model outputs using standardized historical climate forcing.
• Testing vegetation distribution model sensitivity to changing climate and CO2 concentrations.
• Analyzing spatial patterns of long-term climatological means for multiple variables across the U.S.
• Using a realistic synthetic daily time series for model runs requiring sub-monthly weather variance.

Strengths

• Provides data at daily, monthly, and annual temporal resolutions for comprehensive analysis.
• Covers multiple key climate variables: temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, humidity, and wind speed.
• Includes a 'characteristic year' daily series designed to match long-term monthly means while preserving realistic daily weather patterns.
• Dataset is the product of a multi-institutional, international project (VEMAP) focused on model intercomparison.

Limitations

• Key metadata (row count, file size, specific columns) is unavailable across all platform listings.
• The 'last updated' date conflicts between sources (1990 vs. 2026), suggesting metadata may be unreliable.
• Spatial coverage is limited to the conterminous United States.

Provenance

Source

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC), produced by the VEMAP Participants.

Collection Method

Derived from station records and spatial interpolation to create a gridded climatology; the daily 'characteristic year' is synthetically generated to match monthly climatology.

Time Range

1961-1990 (implied by the title 'VEMAP 1: U.S. Climate, 1961 1990')

Freshness

2026-04-09 21:18:58.198781 (from datagov, though this conflicts with a 1990 date from nasa_earthdata)

Geography

Conterminous United States