21st Century Hydrologic Projections for Alaska and Hawaii

However, very few century-long, high-resolution hydroclimate projections exist over Alaska and Hawaii and no statewide projections including hydrology exist. This motivated us to develop a dataset consisting of multiple statistically downscaled climate model projections and corresponding off-line hydrologic model simulations to obtain hydrologic simulations from 1950 to 2099 over the two domains, which fills a critical gap in hydroclimate projection capabilities for these two under-served regions.

We take an approach similar to previous CONUS hydrologic assessments where we: 1) select climate model outputs based on CMIP5 Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 and 8.5; 2) perform statistical downscaling to generate high-resolution climate input data for hydrologic models (12-km grid-spacing for Alaska and 1-km for Hawaii); and 3) perform off-line hydrologic model simulations, using the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model.