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Basin Characterization Model (BCMv8) for California Coastal Basins - Monthly Historical (water years 1896-2019) and Future (water years 2006-2099) Climate and Hydrology

Metadata Updated: November 27, 2025

This data release contains monthly 270-meter gridded Basin Characterization Model (BCMv8) climate inputs and hydrologic outputs for 17 California Coastal Basins (Eel River, Fort Bragg, Fort Ross, Klamath, Los Angeles, Mad River, Mattole, Napa Sonoma, Russian River, Salinas, San Diego, San Francisco Coastal South, Santa Clara River Valley, Santa Clara River Valley South Bay, Smith, South Bay, and South Delta) and the surrounding contributing watershed area containing 181 groundwater basins. Downscaled gridded climate inputs (Daly et al., 2008) include: precipitation (ppt), minimum temperature (tmn), maximum temperature (tmx), and potential evapotranspiration (pet). Gridded hydrologic variables include: actual evapotranspiration (aet), climatic water deficit (cwd), snowpack (pck), recharge (rch), runoff (run), and soil storage (str). The units for temperature variables are degrees Celsius, and all other variables are in millimeters. Monthly historical variables from water years 1896 to 2019 are summarized into water year files and long-term average summaries for water years 1981-2010. Four future climate scenarios were spatially downscaled from 6 kilometers to 270 meters, and run through the BCMv8 using the same model parameters. The future climate scenarios (Pierce et al., 2014) are all Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 and include: CanESM2, CNRM-CM5, HadGEM2-ES, and MIROC5 from California's Forth Climate Change Assessment. Future climate scenarios span from water year 2007 to 2099, and monthly variables were summarized by water year and the average 2070 to 2099 period. Streamflow for each calibration gage was calculated using a post processing Excel spreadsheet and BCMv8 recharge and runoff, and are provided in tabular comma separated .csv files. Raster grids are in the NAD83 California Teale Albers, (meters) projection in an open format ascii text file (.asc). References cited: Daly, C., Halbleib, M., Smith, J.I., Gibson, W.P., Doggett, M.K., Taylor, G.H., Curtis, J. and Pasteris, P.P., 2008. Physiographically sensitive mapping of climatological temperature and precipitation across the conterminous United States. International Journal of Climatology: a Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 28(15), pp.2031-2064. Flint, L.E., Flint, A.L., and Stern, M.A., 2021, The Basin Characterization Model - A monthly regional water balance software package (BCMv8) data release and model archive for hydrologic California (ver. 2.0, February 2023): U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9PT36UI. Pierce, D.W., Cayan, D.R. and Thrasher, B.L., 2014. Statistical downscaling using localized constructed analogs (LOCA). Journal of hydrometeorology, 15(6), pp.2558-2585.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date September 14, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 27, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 14, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 27, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-5fce937bd34e30b91239709e
Data Last Modified 2023-06-10T00:00:00Z
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 57cf9907-314f-4df8-be0a-0329038ca3be
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 161f9422d4a642cedb33dc93d26c2afc714fb09e185a131b54ec56b9b698cca7
Source Schema Version 1.1

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