The datasets on this page have been developed by AdaptWest, a project funded by the Wilburforce Foundation to develop information resources for climate adaptation planning. The data were generated using the ClimateNA software. ClimateNA downscales gridded data from PRISM and WorldClim for current climate, and downscales data from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) database corresponding to the 6th IPCC Assessment Report for future projections. In addition to ensemble projections, data are also provided from 9 representative individual AOGCMs. The rasters provided via this page were generated using ClimateNA version 7.3, which fixed a bug that limited the dynamic local elevation adjustment from being fully implemented for monthly minimum temperature. In other words, the Tmin rasters generated from ClimateNA versions prior to v7.3 did not have the expected degree of adjustment based on elevation. For rasters generated previously using ClimateNA v7.1, see this page.

For more information on the emission scenarios (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways; SSPs) used in CMIP6, see this primer.

Please cite the datasets below as:

AdaptWest Project. 2022. Gridded current and projected climate data for North America at 1km resolution, generated using the ClimateNA v7.30 software (T. Wang et al., 2022). Available at adaptwest.databasin.org.

For further information and citation refer to:

For interpolated data produced using CMIP5 projections, see this link.
For interpolated data produced using the older CMIP3 projections, see this link.

The gridded climate layers downloadable below are in Lambert Azimuthal Equal-Area projection, at 1km resolution, and covering North America.

The rasters are provided in the GeoTIFF format, a non-proprietary format which is compatible with most GIS applications. The individual rasters are ~30MB in size, and each zipfile (which contains a group of rasters) is about 1GB in size.

Two sets of variables are available for download. One consists of 33 biologically relevant variables, including seasonal and annual means, extremes, growing and chilling degree days, snow fall, potential evapotranspiration, and a number of drought indices. The second dataset consists of 48 monthly temperature and precipitation variables. See the metadata for complete description of variables.

These data are made available under a CC-BY 4.0 license. This license allows users to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator.

Please report issues or questions via email to klamathconservation at gmail dot com with "Adaptwest" in the email subject line.

Model selection

Selecting scenarios for climate change impact and adaptation research is a complex task. On this page, we provide historical and projected climate normals for nine individual global climate models (AOGCMs) and two ensemble-mean projections. These nine models are the eight-model general-purpose ensemble selected by Mahony et al. (2022), plus one model (UKESM1-0) that represents the group of CMIP6 models with very high equilibrium climate sensitivity relative to observational evidence. The ensemble mean projections are calculated from the 8-model ensemble and a larger 13-model ensemble (see dendrogram below), the latter being representative of the full unconstrained CMIP6 ensemble (Mahony et al. 2022). Consistent with the guidance provided by Hausfather et al. (2022), users wishing to use an ensemble mean projection are encouraged to use the 8-model rather than the 13-model ensemble mean. In addition, users of the individual model projections are advised to exclude UKESM1-0 from ensemble analysis. Further rationale for this guidance and a comparison of the 8 and 13-model ensembles is available here.