CONUS404: Four-kilometer long-term regional hydroclimate reanalysis over the conterminous United States (ver. 2.0, December 2023)

CONUS404 is a unique, high-resolution hydro-climate dataset appropriate for forcing hydrological models and conducting meteorological analysis over the contiguous United States. CONUS404, so named because it covers the CONtiguous United States for 40 years at 4-km resolution, was produced by the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model simulations run by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) as part of a collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Water Mission Area. In fact, CONUS404 includes 43 years of data (water years 1980-2022) and the spatial domain extends beyond the CONUS into Canada and Mexico, thereby capturing transboundary river basins and covering all contributing areas for the CONUS surface waters.

The CONUS404 dataset, produced using WRF version 3.9.1.1, is the successor to the CONUS1 dataset (Liu and others, 2017) with improved representation of weather and climate conditions in the central United States due to the addition of a shallow groundwater module and several other improvements in the Noah-Multiparameterization (Noah-MP) Land Surface Model. It also uses a more up-to-date and higher-resolution reanalysis dataset (ERA5; Hersbach and others, 2020) as input and covers a longer period than CONUS1.