PRECIPITATION AND SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE DATA FOR GULF OF MEXICO REGION


This page was last updated January 22, 2023.

Station Data. For each year from 1950 to 2022, we have computed the largest 7-day total precipitation during the hurricane season (July to November) from 437 stations in the Global Historical Climatological Network (GHCN). Stations considered for inclusion were all those east of 100 degrees W longitude in the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida. For each station and year, the annual maximum is computed if at least 90% of the potential datapoints are available; if not, it is NA. A station is included if at least 54 of the 73 possible summer maxima are available. Column 1 is the file name as recorded in database for the Global Historical Climatological Network; for example, the first station in the database has file name USC00010252; link to GHCN is "https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/global-historical-climatology-network-daily/access/USC00010252.csv". Columns 2 and 3 of the file are the station name and state; columns 4 and 5 are the longitude and latitude; the remaining columns are annual maxima from 1950-2022, missing values being denoted by NA.

Gulf of Mexico Mean Sea Surface Temperatures. This is derived from the "HadISST" series of gridded sea surface temperatures; the latest version may be downloaded from "https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/data/download.html", file HadISST_sst.nc.gz (netcdf file; unzip and then use R package ncdf4 to read). This file consists of July-June 12-month mean SSTs over the box between latitudes 21 and 29 degrees north, longitudes 83 and 97 degrees west (see map).

Both datasets are updated versions of the data considered by Brook T. Russell, Mark D. Risser, Richard L. Smith and Kenneth E. Kunkel, "Investigating the association between late spring Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures and U.S. Gulf Coast precipitation extremes with focus on Hurricane Harvey", published 2020 in Environmetrics. The data collection and proposed analysis also draws from the method of Mark D. Risser, Michael F. Wehner, "Attributable Human-Induced Changes in the Likelihood and Magnitude of the Observed Extreme Precipitation during Hurricane Harvey", in Geophysical Research Letters.

Model Data: ssp585. - Model Data: ssp245. - Model Data: ssp126. These data are from the CMIP6 climate modeling experiment downloaded from the Copernicus website. Monthly data from 17 climate models were downloaded as netcdf files and regridded to calculate the mean summer temperature (average of tasmax and tasmin for June, July, August) for latitudes between 21 and 29 degrees north, longitudes between 83 and 97 degrees west, for each year from 1850 to 2100 (historical data up to 2014, sspXXX from 2015 to 2100, where XXX is one of 585, 245, 126). Plots of the data are shown below. The superimposed blue curve is the mean of the 17 climate models, smoothed by natural splines with 6DF. The red curve is the observed Gulf of Mexico Mean Sea Surface Temperatures for the years available. All data are expressed as anomalies from the years 1961-1990.


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