Development and Evaluation of a High Resolution Historical Climate Dataset over California
Improving the spatial (to 2 km) and temporal (to hourly) resolution of historical climate data needed for natural gas sector resilience planning.
The Regents of California, San Diego
Recipient
La Jolla, CA
Recipient Location
38th
Senate District
77th
Assembly District
$1,277,295
Amount Spent
Active
Project Status
Project Update
The project has continued to produce the "wet" downscaling simulations, using super-computing platforms to continue producing 6 kilometer (km) and 2km downscaling results covering approximately 39 years (~93% of promised simulations that cover 1982 - early 2025). The “dry” simulation, covering 1980-2024, has been completed, including bias correction of selected variables (temperature and relative humidity).
There has been some delay in the “wet” data production due to processing time adjustments and it is taking longer than expected to process the 40+ years of historical data over various super computers (at Scripps, U.S, Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Energy etc.). This has led to delays in the work on post processing routine for datasets to be provided to users. Therefore a no cost time extension was processed; moving the agreement end date to March 2026 (from March 2025).
Outside funding has been acquired making it possible to generate the dynamical weather/climate events beyond California, covering most of the western United States. This expansion is beneficial for the state to understand co-occurring extremes and sequences of hazardous events that occur outside of the state but which do impact gas system reliability or prices.
The Issue
The gas sector, other utilities, and numerous other stakeholders in the state need more spatially and temporally detailed historical climate, weather, and hydrological data to assess resilience to present and future climate changes and to conduct operations and planning. Of importance is the makeup of extreme events, which may derive from sequences of occurrences, and can manifest as compound multi-variate hazards. The fine-scale data required from recent decades of time history in California and its surrounding region to fully evaluate and prepare for co-occurring extremes and sequences of hazardous events have not previously been assembled. Sources of historical climate trends must be understood, as this bears on how such trends continue into the future and how California's gas investor-owned utilities (IOUs) will need to plan for reliability as the state decarbonizes.
Project Innovation
The project is improving the spatial (to 2 km) and temporal (to hourly) resolution of historical (last four decades going back to the early 1980s) climate data covering all of California and surrounding regions. This historical high resolution weather and climate data is needed by the gas IOUs, along with a broader set of stakeholders in California to provide better information to assess the risk of compound climate events, stress test the California utility and other systems using the historical baseline from which to gauge projected future conditions, and assess the resiliency of the system in the face of long-term trends combined with shorter-term extremes.
Project Goals
Project Benefits
Improvement in spatial and temporal resolution of historical climate data will enable California's gas IOUs and other stakeholders to assess compound climate events at scales that are more specific to the California utility and other gas systems. This will enable more detailed stress tests that use the historical baseline to gauge projected future conditions. Additionally, resiliency assessment of the systems can be done at improved resolutions (time and space) and details while taking into account the long-term trends combined with the short-term extremes.
Reliability
A high-resolution reanalysis is useful for supporting increased gas system reliability because the reanalysis data can be used in weather hazard analysis studies (e.g., drought, flooding, and high winds). The resulting datasets provide additional detail of the potential exposure to climate-related weather hazards and at geographic and temporal scales that are relevant to the gas system by providing fine detail to fill in data gaps in observation records
Safety
By providing additional detail in time and scale of the potential impacts of climate related hazards on the gas system, this project supports IOUs in examining performance of components of the gas system infrastructure, leading to strategies to improve performance and safety of the gas system.
Energy Security
By providing additional detail in time and scale of the potential impacts of climate, this information is expected to support improved energy system planning and avoidance of negative impacts due to climate and weather hazards, thus improving energy security
Key Project Members
Daniel Cayan
Subrecipients
Portland State University
Desert Research Institute
