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PRISM
Spatial climate products (digital maps) are available through
the linkages below. These products were developed through a
partnership between the NRCS National Water and Climate Center
(NWCC) and the
Prism Group at
Oregon State University (OSU), developers of PRISM (the Parameter-elevation
Regressions on Independent Slopes Model).
This partnership has resulted in the production of the best and, in
many cases, the first high-spatial-resolution climate map products
for the United States. PRISM is a an analytical tool that
uses point data, a digital elevation model, and other spatial data
sets to generate gridded estimates of monthly, yearly, and
event-based climatic parameters, such as precipitation, temperature,
snowfall, degree days, and dew point.
All products now available have been thoroughly scrutinized, having
passed a strenuous peer-review process in cooperation with state and
regional climatologists across the nation. The goal is to deliver
the highest quality and most accurate climate maps of the U.S. ever
produced. |
Current Products
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Cartographic-Quality Maps
Cartographic-quality maps of mean annual precipitation for each of
the 48 contiguous U.S. states
NRCS Data Gateway
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Precipitation Coverages
Gridded (approximate 4 km horizontal resolution, in Arc or GRASS
formats) and polygon (Arc Info Export format) mean monthly and annual
precipitation coverages for all 50 states, three regions of the
continental U.S. (East, Central or West), or whole U.S. Metadata also
available.
Also:
2-in-10-year-probability map of annual total precipitation for the
continental U.S. (gun-zip, ASCII file, Arc header).
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Temperature Coverages
*Note: All temperature coverages and others shown below are
accessible only to those persons with .usda.gov addresses. Other
persons should contact the
Prism Group for access to these
layers.
- Gridded (approximate 4 km
horizontal resolution, Arc format) coverages of mean monthly maximum
temperature for Alaska. Values are in degrees C x 100. Winzip files.
- Gridded (approximate 4 km
horizontal resolution, Arc format) coverages of mean monthly minimum
temperature for Alaska. Values are in degrees C x 100. Winzip files.
- Median
date of last
spring 28 F temperature and
first fall 28
F temperature maps. ASCII values for the continental U.S.,
gunzip files, Arc headers. Values are in Julian days x 100, so a
value of 27406 means Julian day 274.06, or October 1 in a non-leap
year (September 30 in a leap year). Also available in the same
format is the difference map between these two dates, giving the
average
length of the frost-free season (days between last 28 F
temp. in spring and first 28 F temp. in fall).
- Extreme minimum temperature
maps. Coverages include the
1-in-10 year
minimum temperature in January, the
2-in-10 year
minimum temperature in January, and the
3-in-10 year
minimum temperature in January. Also available is a coverage
of the
all-time record low temperature map (in any month). All
coverages are gun-zipped ASCII files with Arc headers, and are for
the continental U.S. (48 states) as a whole, only.
Go to these sites for more information, including full
documentation and metadata, regarding PRISM climate
map products developed by the NACSE at OSU, in conjunction with the
NRCS-NWCC:
Other, related links (now or soon using PRISM climate map
products):
Content Manager:
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USDA-NRCS National Water and Climate Center
1201 NE Lloyd Blvd., Suite 802
Portland OR 97232-1274
(503)414-3017 Fax: (503)414-3101
email: jan.curtis@por.usda.gov
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