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Historic and projected streamflow for the southwestern United States (1975-2099)

Published by U.S. Geological Survey | Department of the Interior | Metadata Last Checked: January 27, 2026 | Last Modified: 2020-05-07T00:00:00Z
We projected future streamflow outcomes arising from climate change for the southwestern United States during the 21st century due to climate change under two possible greenhouse gas concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and 8.5). The results inform water managers about the future risks of drought in their water resource regions by providing bounds on the possible locations and extents of streamflow loss. To get to these results, we used downscaled future and historical climate data from seven models to drive a new, calibrated SPAtially Referenced Regression On Watershed attributes (SPARROW) streamflow model (Wise and others, 2019, Miller and others, 2020). Temperature and precipitation data come from the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) Downscaled Climate Projections (NEX-DCP30, Thrasher and others, 2013 and Thrasher and others, 2015), and actual and potential evapotranspiration come from the NEX-DCP30 temperature and precipitation used in the Monthly Water Balance Model (MWBM, Hostetler and Alder, 2016 and Alder, 2017a,b,c). This data set comprises climate data preprocessing code to convert the gridded, monthly-scale climate data to reach scale multidecadal averages for the intervals 1975-2005, 2020-2049, 2040-2069 and 2070-2099, the model input (data1) and model control files, the model code, model results files, and code to post-process and analyze the streamflow model results. The raw climate data (NEX-DCP30, MWBM), and SPARROW model calibration documentation are publicly available elsewhere and are cross linked with this data release (see crossref section). The full data preparation, modeling, and analysis methods, as well as results are described in Miller and others, (2021)

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