These data were compiled to forecast climate exposure for 29 major plant communities in the southwestern United States to changing climate under two future climate change scenarios. An objective of our study was that species within plant communities have unique climate suitability signatures and forecast changes in climatic suitability will not be uniform within the species respective communities or among species within the community. We developed these spatial models where climate exposure is represented as a composite score of the climate exposure of characteristic plants for each community. Baseline climate exposure rasters represent a baseline climate change and were developed for current climate conditions (~1960-1990) from WordlClim v1.4 data. Climate exposure ratings are forecast for the period 2040-60 using the Community Climate System Model v4 (CCSM4) for Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5. Climate exposure is indicated as a categorical score (1-5) that is a composite of climate suitability scores for characteristic plant species identified for each plant community and represents a range of climate exposure ratings from unfavorable to best climatic suitability. Plant communities are represented as mapped by the USGS – Core Science Analytics, Synthesis, and Library – Gap Analysis Project, 2011 (Gap Landcover).