Restructuring and Serving Web-Accessible Streamflow Data From the NOAA National Water Model Historic Simulations

Authors

J Michael Johnson
David L Blodgett
Keith C Clarke
Jon Pollak

Publication Date

10-20-2023

Journal

Scientific Data

Abstract

In 2016, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deployed the first iteration of an operational National Water Model (NWM) to forecast the water cycle in the continental United States. With many versions, an hourly, multi-decadal historic simulation is made available to the public. In all released to date, the files containing simulated streamflow contain a snapshot of model conditions across the entire domain for a single timestep which makes accessing time series a technical and resource-intensive challenge. In the most recent release, extracting a complete streamflow time series for a single location requires managing 367,920 files (~16.2 TB). In this work we describe a reproducable process for restructuring a sequential set of NWM steamflow files for efficient time series access and provide restructured datasets for versions 1.2 (1993-2018), 2.0 (1993-2020), and 2.1 (1979-2022). These datasets have been made accessible via an OPeNDAP enabled THREDDS data server for public use and a brief analysis highlights the latest version of the model should not be assumed best for all locations. Laslty, we describe an R package that expedites data retrieval with examples for multiple use-cases.

Keywords

Hydrology, Environmental impact

Comments

This article has been corrected. See Sci Data. 2024 February 12; 11: 192.

Data Citations

Data Availability Statement

PMID: 37863923