Faculty, Staff and Student Publications
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
DOI
10.1038/s41597-023-02316-7
PMID
37863923
PMCID
PMC10589206
PubMedCentral® Posted Date
October 2023
PubMedCentral® Full Text Version
Post-print
Published Open-Access
yes
Included in
Bioinformatics Commons, Biomedical Informatics Commons, Environmental Public Health Commons, Medical Sciences Commons, Oncology Commons