Medium-Resolution Surface Meteorological Forcing Data for Hydrological Modelling and Climate Change Impact Analysis over most of North America

This dataset provides an improved set of forcing data for large-scale hydrological modelling and climate change impacts assessment over a domain covering most of North America. The EU WATCH ERA-Interim reanalysis (WFDEI) has a long historical record (1979-2016) and global coverage. 30 years of WFDEI data (1979-2008) were used to bias-correct climate projections from 15 ensemble members of Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis Canadian Regional Climate Model (CanRCM4) simulations between 1951–2100 under Representative Concentration Pathway— RCP8.5. A multivariate bias correction algorithm (MBCn) was used to adjust the joint distribution of a set of seven meteorological variables, preserving their auto and cross correlations simultaneously. An analysis of the datasets shows the biases in the CanRCM4 during the historical period with respect to WFDEI have been removed and that the climate change signals in CanRCM4 are preserved. The resulting bias-corrected dataset (CanRCM4-WFDEI 3h*0.50ᵒ resolution) is a consistent set of historical and climate projection data suitable for large-scale modelling and future climate scenario analysis.