VEMAP 2: US Annual Historical Climate Data 1895-1993

VEMAP 2 provides a gridded historical climate dataset for the conterminous United States spanning approximately 100 years. It was developed by the Vegetation/Ecosystem Modeling and Analysis Project team, led by Kittel et al., and is hosted by NASA and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The dataset includes annual, monthly, and daily time series with realistic interannual variability for key climate variables.

Use Cases

• Comparing time-dependent ecological model responses using variables like minimum and maximum temperature, precipitation, vapor pressure, and solar radiation.
• Creating extended climate projections from 1895 to 2100 by concatenating this historical series with future climate change scenarios.
• Analyzing interannual climate variability across the conterminous U.S. with physically consistent daily data.
• Assessing the impact of historical atmospheric CO2 and N-deposition on ecosystems using model input data.

Strengths

• Provides approximately 100 years of temporally consistent data (1895-1993).
• Includes multiple temporal resolutions (annual, monthly, daily) with physical consistency among variables on a daily basis.
• Designed for direct integration with future scenario data to create a continuous series from 1895 to ~2100.
• Cross-platform presence on Data.gov and NASA EarthData indicates established scientific use and curation.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, column names, and exact dataset size are unavailable across all sources.
• Sources conflict on the 'last updated' date, with one listing 2026-03 12 and another listing 1993-12-31.
• License is specified only as 'other-license-specified', requiring users to consult with the NCAR VEMAP Data Group for appropriate use.

Provenance

Source

NCAR VEMAP Data Group; Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center.

Collection Method

Gridded data development for model input, with consistency between climate and topography, as reported in Kittel et al. (1997).

Time Range

1895-1993

Freshness

2026-03-12 20:25:05.067378

Geography

Conterminous United States