Development of a large-sample watershed-scale hydrometeorological data set for the contiguous USA: Data set characteristics and assessment of regional variability in hydrologic model performancD

Area-averaged forcing data for the period 1980-2010 was generated for three basin spatial configurations – basin mean, hydrologic response units (HRUs) and elevation bands – by mapping daily, gridded meteorological data sets to the subbasin (Daymet) and basin polygons (Daymet, Maurer and NLDAS).

Daily streamflow data was compiled from the United States Geological Survey National Water Information System. The focus of this paper is to (1) present the data set for community use and (2) provide a model performance benchmark using the coupled Snow-17 snow model and the Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting Model, calibrated using the shuffled complex evolution global optimization routine. After optimization minimizing daily root mean squared error, 90% of the basins have Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency scores ≥0.55 for the calibration period and 34% ≥ 0.8.