About the Dataset

As anthropogenic climate change-fueled extremes increasingly impact people worldwide, including extreme humid heat and drought conditions, there is a growing need for high spatio-temporal resolution data on both current and projected hydrometeorological and temperature variables and extremes. 

The Climate Hazards Center (CHC) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CHC-CMIP6) was created in answer to this need: this dataset has been explicitly developed to support the analysis of climate-related hazards over the recent past and in the near-future. 

This climate projection dataset contains global, daily gridded data for the observational (1983-2016) and projection (2030 and 2050) periods to be used in the identification and monitoring of hydroclimatic extremes. The dataset contains global daily high resolution (0.05°) grids of the Climate Hazards InfraRed Temperature with Stations (CHIRTS-daily) temperature product, the Climate Hazards InfraRed Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) precipitation product, and ERA5-derived relative humidity, from which which Vapor Pressure Deficits (VPD) and maximum Wet Bulb Globe Temperatures (WBGTmax) were derived. 

Large CMIP6 ensembles from the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) 245 and SSP 585 scenarios were used to develop high resolution (0.05°) daily 2030 and 2050 ‘delta’ fields. These deltas were used to perturb the historical observations, thereby generating 2030 and 2050 projections of daily precipitation, temperature, relative humidity, and derived VPD and WBGTmax. These delta fields are based on the CMIP6 multi-model ensemble-based changes between 1983-2016 and 2025-2035 and 2045-2055. 

The CHC-CMIP6 data product also includes information on extremes. For Tmin, Tmax, VPD, and WBGTmax, monthly data exists for the number of days in that month that the variable surpassed an ‘extreme’ threshold. For precipitation, monthly data is available indicating whether each pixel fell below a threshold (extreme low precipitation) or not. Extremes data are also available for the current and projection periods.

Data Access

Data may be accessed at: https://data.chc.ucsb.edu/experimental/CHC_CMIP6/ 

For any questions about data access, please contact: ewilliams@ucsb.edu

Suggested citation: 
Williams, E., Funk, C.,Peterson, P., Tuholske, C. (2023). The Climate Hazards Center Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CHC-CMIP6) climate projection dataset, version 1.0. https://doi.org/10.21424/R47H0M  

The dataset is under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.