U.S. Climate Change Scenarios from Eight Model Experiments

VEMAP 1 provides climate change scenarios for the United States based on eight model experiments, including seven global atmospheric general circulation models and one nested regional climate model. The dataset focuses on the response of biogeography and biogeochemistry to environmental variability, with scenarios derived from 1xCO2 and 2xCO2 equilibrium runs. It is an ongoing multi-institutional, international project led by NASA, with data spatially interpolated to a 0.5-degree grid.

Use Cases

• Intercomparing biogeochemistry model outputs using variables like monthly precipitation and temperature differences.
• Analyzing vegetation type distribution sensitivity to changes in solar radiation and vapor pressure ratios.
• Validating regional climate model (RegCM) projections against GCM outputs for the U.S. domain.
• Assessing ecosystem response to elevated CO2 using scenario data for horizontal wind speed and relative humidity.

Strengths

• Includes eight distinct climate change experiments, providing a basis for model intercomparison.
• Data is spatially interpolated to a consistent 0.5-degree VEMAP grid for analysis.
• Scenarios are derived from high-resolution GCM experiments reported in IPCC (1990).

Limitations

• Critical metadata conflicts exist: the 'last updated' date differs significantly between sources (1990 vs. 2026).
• Specific row counts, file sizes, and detailed column names are not provided by any source.
• The license is listed as 'other-license-specified' without explicit terms.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Model outputs from GCM and RegCM experiments, spatially interpolated from source grids to a 0.5-degree VEMAP grid.

Time Range

Scenarios are based on equilibrium model runs, but a specific temporal coverage for the data is not stated.

Freshness

2026-03-12 20:35:33.055838

Geography

United States, with data on a 0.5-degree grid.