VEMAP 2: U.S. Annual Climate Change Scenarios

VEMAP Phase 2 provides transient climate change scenarios for the conterminous United States from 1994 to approximately 2100. The data set includes projections for total incident solar radiation, minimum and maximum temperature, vapor pressure, precipitation, relative humidity, and mean monthly irradiance. It was designed to be concatenated with historical climate data to create a continuous series from 1895 to ~2100 for ecosystem modeling and the U.S. National Assessment.

Use Cases

• Comparing ecological model responses to transient climate forcings based on AOGCM projections.
• Analyzing long-term trends and decadal variability patterns like ENSO in future climate scenarios.
• Driving biogeochemical and coupled biogeochemical-biogeographical models for the conterminous U.S.
• Creating extended climate time series by concatenating with historical VEMAP data from 1895-1993.

Strengths

• Scenarios derived from two major AOGCM models (Canadian Climate Center and Hadley Centre HADCM2).
• Covers a long-term projection period from 1994 to approximately 2100.
• Designed for integration with a historical dataset to create a continuous 200+ year climate series.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, column names, and exact file size are unknown across all sources.
• License is ambiguously specified as 'other-license-specified', requiring user verification.
• Users are requested to confer with the NCAR VEMAP Data Group, indicating potential usage constraints.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), NCAR VEMAP Data Group.

Collection Method

Derived from transient greenhouse gas experiments with sulfate aerosols from coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs).

Time Range

1994 to approximately 2100 (designed to be concatenated with 1895-1993 data).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 on datagov and nasa_earthdata.

Geography

Conterminous United States.