This dataset consists of spatial representations of relative vegetation change produced through summarization of ALFRESCO model outputs. These specific outputs are from the Integrated Ecosystem Model (IEM) project, and are from the linear coupled version using AR5/CMIP5 climate inputs (IEM Generation 2).

Rain on snow (ROS) events were derived from 20km dynamically downscaled ERA-Interim reanalysis and global climate model (GCM) climate projections data. The GCM data were from RCP 8.5 of GFDL-CM3 and NCAR-CCSM4. The amount of liquid precipitation for each day is provided in the database for each grid cell and was determined to be a ROS event by the temperature being at or near freezing and/or the presence of snow on the ground.

This set of files includes downscaled future projections of vapor pressure (units=hPa) at a 1km spatial scale. This data has been prepared as model input for the Integrated Ecosystem Model (IEM). There can be errors or serious limitations to the application of this data to other analyses. The data constitute the result of a downscaling procedure using 2 General Circulation Models (GCM) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) for RCP 8.5 scenario (2006-2100) monthly time series and Climatic Research Unit (CRU) TS2.0 (1961-1990,10 min spatial resolution) global climatology data. Please note that this data is used to fill in a gap in available data for the Integrated Ecosystem Model (IEM) and does not constitute a complete or precise measurement of this variable in all locations. RCPs: 8.5 Centers, Model Names, Versions, and Acronyms: National Center for Atmospheric Research,Community Earth System Model 4,NCAR-CCSM4 Meteorological Research Institute,Coupled General Circulation Model v3.0,MRI-CGCM3 Methods of creating downscaled relative humidity data: 1. The GCM input data are distributed as relative humidity along with the CRU CL 2.0, therefore no conversion procedure was necessary before beginning the downscaling procedure. 2. Proportional Anomalies generated using the 20c3m Historical relative humidity data 1961-1990 climatology and the projected relative humidity data (2006-2100). 3. These proportional anomalies are interpolated using a spline interpolation to a 10min resolution grid for downscaling with the CRU CL 2.0 Relative Humidity Data. 4. The GCM proportional anomalies are multiplied by month to the baseline CRU CL 2.0 10min relative humidity climatology for the period 1961-1990. Creating a downscaled relative humidity projected time series 2006-2100. 5. Due to the conversion procedure and the low quality of the input data to begin with, there were values that fell well outside of the range of acceptable relative humidity (meaning that there were values >100 percent), these values were re-set to a relative humidity of 95 at the suggestion of the researchers involved in the project. It is well known that the CRU data is spotty for Alaska and the Circumpolar North, due to a lack of weather stations and poor temporal coverage for those stations that exist. 6. The desired output resolution for the AIEM modeling project is 1km, so the newly created downscaled time series is resampled to this resolution using a standard bilinear interpolation resampling procedure. 7. The final step was to convert the downscaled relative humidity data to vapor pressure using the calculation below, which uses a downscaled temperature data set created utilizing the same downscaling procedure. EQUATION: saturated vapor pressure = 6.112 x exp(17.62 x temperature/(243.12+temperature)) vapor pressure = (relative humidity x saturated vapor pressure)/100

This set of files includes downscaled historical estimates of monthly total precipitation (in millimeters, no unit conversion necessary, rainwater equivalent) from 1901 - 2013 (CRU TS 3.22) at 10 min x 10 min spatial resolution with global coverage. The downscaling process utilizes CRU CL v. 2.1 climatological datasets from 1961-1990.

These files include climatological summaries of downscaled historical and projected decadal average monthly derived snow variables and summaries at 771 meter spatial resolution across Alaska. There are three types of files: 1). The historical and future snowfall water equivalent (SWE) in millimeters, produced by multiplying snow-day fraction by decadal average monthly precipitation and summing over 6 months from October to March to estimate the total SWE on April 1. 2). The historical and future ratio of SWE to total precipitation (SFEtoP) in percent. SFEtoP is calculated as (SWE / total precipitation) and also represents the six month October to March period. 3). The future difference in SWE with respect to the historical baseline (dSWE) in percent. dSWE is calculated as ((future SWE – historical SWE) / historical SWE) * 100. These data are also summary for the six month October to March period. The historical baseline period is 1970-1999, (file naming convention “H70.99”) and data are calculated from downscaled CRU TS 3.1 data. Projected variables exist for RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 emission scenarios and for 5 GCMs: NCAR-CCSM4, GFDL-CM3, GISS-E2-R, IPSL-CM5, and MRI-CGCM3. The 5-model mean (file naming convention "5MM") was also computed. Projections exist for three thirty-year climatologies: the 2020s (2010-2039), the 2050s (2040-2069), and the 2080s (2070-2099). The snow-day fraction data used can be found here: http://ckan.snap.uaf.edu/dataset/projected-decadal-averages-of-monthly-snow-day-fraction-771m-cmip5-ar5 http://ckan.snap.uaf.edu/dataset/historical-decadal-averages-of-monthly-snow-day-fraction-771m-cru-ts3-0-3-1 The precipitation data used can be found here: http://ckan.snap.uaf.edu/dataset/projected-monthly-and-derived-precipitation-products-771m-cmip5-ar5 http://ckan.snap.uaf.edu/dataset/historical-monthly-and-derived-precipitation-products-771m-cru-ts Note: In Littell et al. 2018, "SWE" is referred to as "SFE", and "SFEtoP" as "SFE:P"

This dataset includes quantile-mapped historical and projected model runs of AR5 daily mean mean temperature (tas, degrees C) for each day of every year from 1958 - 2100 at 2.5 x 2.5 degree spatial resolution across 3 CMIP5 models. They are 365 multi-band geotiff files, one file per year, each band representing one day of the year, with no leap years.

This dataset consists of single band GeoTIFFs containing total annual counts of wet days for each year from 1980-2100 for one downscaled reanalysis (ERA-Interim, 1980-2015) and two downscaled CMIP5 global climate models driven under the RCP 8.5 baseline emissions scenario (NCAR-CCSM4 and GFDL-CM3, 2006-2100), all derived from the same dynamical downscaling effort using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model (Version 3.5). A day is counted as a "wet day" if the total precipitation for that day is 1 mm or greater.

This set of files includes downscaled projections of monthly totals, and derived annual, seasonal, and decadal means of monthly average temperature (in degrees Celsius, no unit conversion necessary) from 1901 - 2006 (CRU TS 3.0) or 2009 (CRU TS 3.1) at 771 x 771 meter spatial resolution.

A landfast ice dataset along the Chukchi Sea continental shelf, spanning 1996-2023. Spatial resolution is 100 m. Each month of the ice season (October through July) is summarized over three 9-year periods (1996-2005, 2005-2014, 2014-2023) using the minimum, maximum, median, and mean distance of SLIE from the coastline. The minimum extent indicates the region that was always occupied by landfast ice during a particular calendar month. The median extent indicates where landfast occurred at least 50% of the time. The maximum extent represents regions that may only have been landfast ice on one occasion during the selected time period. The mean SLIE position for the each month and and time period is also included. The dataset is derived from three sources: seaward landfast ice images derived from synthetic aperture radar images from the RadarSAT and EnviSAT constellations (1996-2008), the Alaska Sea Ice Program (ASIP) ice charts (2008-2017, 2019-2022), and the G10013 SIGID-3 Arctic Ice Charts produced by the National Ice Center (NIC; 2017-2019, 2022-2023). Within each GeoTIFF file there are 8 different pixel values representing different characteristics: 0 - Ocean 1 - Maximum Landfast Ice Extent 2 - Median Landfast Ice Extent 3 - Minimum Landfast Ice Extent 4 - Mean Landfast Ice Edge 5 - Land 6 - Out of Domain 7 - Coast Vector Shadow The file naming convention is as follows: Chukchi_$month_$era_SLIE_MMM_summary.tif For example, the name Chukchi_05_2005-2014_SLIE_MMM_summary.tif indicates the file represents data for May 2005-2014. These data were updated on August 21, 2025 to rectify the omission of some NIC chart data sources for the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons.

This data set includes weekly (January 1954 to December 2013) and monthly (January 1850 to December 2022) midpoint historical sea ice concentration (0 - 100%) estimates at 1/4 x 1/4 degree spatial resolution for the ocean region around the state of Alaska, USA. This value-added dataset was developed by compiling the below historical data sources into spatially and temporally standardized datasets. Gaps in temporal or spatial resolutions were filled in with spatial and temporal analog month approaches. This dataset is no longer being updated. The NSIDC provides a new version in netCDF format receiving ongoing updates: https://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0051/versions/2.