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Western North American Land Surface Dataset

Index

Metadata file identifier

  • 40d66c8d-b148-11df-b556-00219b106224

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    Language

  • eng

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    Contact
    Individual name

  • Aaron Berg

    • Organisation name

  • University of Guelph

    • Contact information
    Address
    Delivery point

  • 50 Stone Road East

    • City

  • Guelph

    • Administrative area

  • Ontario

    • Postal code

  • N1G 2W1

    • Country

  • Canada

    • Electronic mail address

  • aberg@uoguelph.ca

    • Role

  • custodian

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    Contact
    Individual name

  • Gordon Drewitt

    • Organisation name

  • University of Guelph

    • Contact information
    Address
    Delivery point

  • 50 Stone Road East

    • City

  • Guelph

    • Administrative area

  • Ontario

    • Postal code

  • N1G 2W1

    • Country

  • Canada

    • Electronic mail address

  • gdrewitt@uoguelph.ca

    • Role

  • custodian

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    Metadata date stamp

  • 2010-08-26

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    Metadata standard name

  • ISO 19115

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    Metadata standard version

  • ISO19115:2003/Cor 1 2006

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    Identification Information
    Citation
    Title

  • Western North American Land Surface Dataset

    • Date
    Date

  • 2010-08-26

    • Date Type

  • publication

    • Abstract

  • Atmospheric forecast models are initialized with climatological values of land surface states. However, to obtain a realistic estimate of the actual current land surface state, a combination of observation and modelling is required. In this case, meteorological data was obtained from the North American Reanalysis (NARR) dataset. This data provides a suite of meteorological and surface variables over the continent at a timestep of three hours from 1979 to the present. The NARR data were regridded to the domain of interest which corresponds to Western North America, commonly referred to as the MAGS grid (Mackenzie Area Gewex Study). The MAGS grid was chosen since detailed information about soil and vegetation types are available. The regridded meteorologcal data was then organized to run the CLASS (Canadian LAnd Surface Scheme) model over each grid cell of the MAGS domain. However, before the model was run, three of the meteorological fields were bias-corrected using monthly observation datasets. The fields that were corrected included surface air temperature, precipitation and short wave radiation. The reason for the bias-correction is that these variables can have a large effect on the accuracy of hydrological variables in land surface models. Drewitt-Berg MAGS-NARR data page 2 of 5 The other meteorological variables used by CLASS are longwave radiation, surface pressure, windspeed and specific humidity. Once CLASS is run for the approximately 4000 grid cells, the data is regridded back to the MAGS grid and downsampled from the half-hourly CLASS timestep to a 6-hourly timestep (by averaging). Variables include: Snow Albedo, Plant Growth Index, Liquid water on canopy, Snow density, Snow mass on canopy, liquid water in snow, Canopy temperature, 0-10cm 10-35 cm and 35-410 cm soil temperature and volumetric water and ice content, Snow Temperature and Snow depth. If anyone is using this dataset it is requested that they contact the authors (Aaron Berg or Gordon Drewitt)

    • Purpose

  • The intention for the dataset is to investigate the importance of realistic initialization fields in regional and global forecasts of weather and climate.

    • Status

  • completed

    • Descriptive keywords
    Keyword

  • Land Surface > Soils > Soil Moisture/Water Content

    • Keyword

  • Land Surface > Soils > Soil Temperature

    • Keyword

  • Terrestrial Hydrosphere > Snow/Ice > Albedo

    • Keyword

  • Terrestrial Hydrosphere > Snow/Ice > Snow Density

    • Keyword

  • Terrestrial Hydrosphere > Snow/Ice > Snow Depth

    • Keyword

  • Terrestrial Hydrosphere > Snow/Ice > Snow Temperature

    • Thesaurus name
    Title

  • GCMD

    • Date
    Date

  • 2004-04-01

    • Date Type

  • publication

    • Spatial representation type

  • grid

    • Spatial resolution
    Distance
  • Distance:

    ~0.33 degree

    • Language

  • eng

    • Topic category

  • climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere

    • Extent
    Geographic element
    West bound longitude

  • -142.05

    • East bound longitude

  • 9.60

    • South bound latitude

  • 35.75

    • North bound latitude

  • 84.40

    • Temporal element
    Extent
    Begin
  • Time position:

    01/01/1979

    • End
  • Time position:

    12/31/2008

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    Distribution information
    Distribution format
    Name

  • TXT

    • Version

  • N/A

    • Distributor
    Distributor contact
    Organisation name

  • DRI Data Legacy

    • Contact information
    Online resource
    Linkage

  • http://www.drinetwork.ca/data-legacy/metadata/western_north_america_class.php

    • Role

  • Distributor

    • Transfer options
    Transfer size (Mb)

  • 4800

    • On-line resource
    Linkage

  • http://odin.meteo.mcgill.ca/dri_download/western_north_america_class.zip

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