We have published a copy of the NA-CORDEX dataset on Amazon Web Services (AWS). We thank the AWS Open Data Sponsorship Program and the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative for providing free storage and egress for these data.
The AWS S3 bucket name is "ncar-na-cordex", in the us-west-2 region.
NOTE: Prior to November 2021, there was an error in the bias-corrected data. The error has now been fixed, and the AWS copy of the dataset was updated with the fixed data in February 2022. Please see Bias Correction Errors for details. Our apologies for any inconvenience.
The NA-CORDEX data on AWS is stored in Zarr format. This format supports the same data model as netCDF and is well suited to object storage and distributed computing in the cloud using the Pangeo libraries in Python.
An Intake-ESM
Catalog listing all available data can be found at:
https://ncar-na-cordex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/catalogs/aws-na-cordex.json
There are independent Zarr stores for each variable, scenario,
output frequency, grid resolution, and bias correction method. The
naming convention is:
frequency/variable.scenario.frequency.grid.bias-correction.zarr
where:
| Variable | Long Name |
|---|---|
| hurs | Near-Surface Relative Humidity * |
| huss | Near-Surface Specific Humidity |
| pr | Precipitation (kg m-2 s-1) |
| prec | Precipitation (mm/day) |
| ps | Surface Air Pressure |
| rsds | Surface Downwelling Shortwave Radiation |
| sfcWind | Near-Surface Wind Speed ** |
| tas | Near-Surface Air Temperature (K) † |
| tasmax | Daily Maximum Near-Surface Air Temperature (K) † |
| tasmin | Daily Minimum Near-Surface Air Temperature (K) † |
| temp | Near-Surface Air Temperature (C) † |
| tmax | Daily Maximum Near-Surface Air Temperature (C) † |
| tmin | Daily Minimum Near-Surface Air Temperature (C) † |
| uas | Eastward Near-Surface Wind Velocity |
| vas | Northward Near-Surface Wind Velocity |
| Scenario | Period | Note |
|---|---|---|
| eval | 1979-2015 | driven by ERA-Interim reanalysis |
| hist | 1950-2005 | driven by Historical GCM |
| rcp45 | 2006-2100 | driven by RCP 4.5 GCM |
| rcp85 | 2006-2100 | driven by RCP 8.5 GCM |
| hist-rcp45 | 1950-2100 | concatenation of hist and rcp45 |
| hist-rcp85 | 1950-2100 | concatenation of hist and rcp85 |
Zarr stores are available for all combinations of variable,
frequency, etc. listed above. For example, the Zarr store
day/pr.hist-rcp85.day.NAM-22i.raw.zarr contains daily
precipitation data from simulations driven by GCMs under historical
and RCP 8.5 emissions for the years 1950-2100 at quarter-degree
resolution, not bias-corrected.
Combining data from different simulations into a single zarr store requires that it have a common time coordinate. To accommodate varying calendars, we inserted days filled with missing_value to pad out the shorter calendars to match the real-world Gregorian calendar. This approach retains all data and allows the use of standard date-time libraries.
Simulations with 365-day / noleap calendars had missing days inserted on Feb. 29th of leap years. Simulations with a 360-day calendar additionally had missing days inserted on January, March, May, August, and October 31st of every year.
Known issues with the data:
https://na-cordex.org/known-issues.html
Descriptions of how the data have been revised over time:
https://na-cordex.org/data-revisions.html
Use of NA-CORDEX data is subject to
the Terms of Use.
When publishing research based on NA-CORDEX data, be sure to include a
citation for the dataset. Information on citing the NA-CORDEX dataset
can be found here:
https://na-cordex.org/dataset-citation.html
The citation for the AWS version of the dataset is:
Bonnlander, B., S. McGinnis, A. Banihirwe, E. Nienhouse, and J. de
La Beaujardière, 2021. "NA-CORDEX dataset on AWS", version
1.0, UCAR/NCAR Computational and Informations Systems Lab, accessed
[date], DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26024/9xkm-fp81
We recommend citing both the parent dataset and the AWS version.