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Downscaled CHELSA projections for the Hawaiian Islands under four representative concentration pathways (RCPs; 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5) for mid- (2040-2059), and late-century (2060-2079) scenarios

Metadata Updated: October 29, 2025

Global downscaled projections are now some of the most widely used climate datasets in the world, however, they are rarely examined for representativeness of local climate or the plausibility of their projected changes. Here we show steps to improve the utility of two such global datasets (CHELSA and WorldClim2) to provide credible climate scenarios for regional climate change impact studies. Our approach is based on three steps: 1) Using a standardized baseline period, comparing available global downscaled projections with regional observation-based datasets and regional downscaled datasets (if available); 2) bias correcting projections using observation-based data; and 3) creating ensembles to make use of the differential strengths of global downscaling datasets. We also explored the patterns and magnitude of change for these regional projected climate shifts to determine their plausibility as future climate scenarios using Hawaiʻi as an example region. While our ensemble projections were shown to largely reduce the deviations between model and observation-based current climate, we show projected climate shifts from these commonly used global datasets can fall well outside the range of future scenarios derived from fine-tuned regional downscaling efforts, and hence should be carefully evaluated. This data release includes a baseline (1983-2012) model as well future climate projections for mid- (2040-2059) and late-century (2060-2079) for three regionally-adapted global datasets (CHELSA, WorldClim2, and an ensemble). We considered mean annual temperature (MAT) and mean annual precipitation (MAP) as our primary variables for comparison since they are the most widely used and desired datasets for climate impact studies. These regionally-downscaled future climate projections are available for various individual Global Circulation Models (GCMs) under four representative concentration pathways (RCPs; 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5) for each global dataset.

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 12, 2025
Metadata Updated Date October 29, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 12, 2025
Metadata Updated Date October 29, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-62ce67c4d34e82ff904ac9a0
Data Last Modified 2022-08-10T00:00:00Z
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 ecf332eb-8c4e-4d98-9a03-314f60956c7d
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -160.5180, 18.5948, -154.4970, 22.5008
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 9873a5978994a521f76e9c6e3674c0054fc639cdf34eeb0849a8096526f5627d
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -160.5180, 18.5948, -160.5180, 22.5008, -154.4970, 22.5008, -154.4970, 18.5948, -160.5180, 18.5948}

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