uw-hydro / vic_sample_data

VIC_sample_data

Sample datasets for the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model.

The following datasets are currently available:

• Stehekin
• WalnutGulch
• FindleyLake

Directory Structure (for dataset $DATASET)

• docs/$DATASET.md - documentation describing dataset $DATASET
• classic/$DATASET/ - classic-driver data for dataset $DATASET
  • forcings/ - ascii-format meteorological forcing files
  • parameters/ - ascii-format parameter files (global, soil, snowband, veg)
• image/$DATASET/ - image-driver data for dataset $DATASET
  • forcings/ - NetCDF-format meteorological forcing files
  • parameters/ - NetCDF-format parameter files (domain, parameters) plus ascii-format global parameter file
• obs/$DATASET/ - observations for dataset $DATASET

vic_sample_data's Issues

some new questions

This is my parameter Settings.Why can't I use the sample data provided in the file to produce results

Add classic driver forcings and parameters for WalnutGulch

Currently this dataset only has image-driver inputs available.

Add observations for WalnutGulch

This basin is well-instrumented, and presumably there are observations publicly available. For example, there are Ameriflux (FLUXNET) towers there, along with soil moisture observations. There are also papers that report the flows in at least one stream there.

These would be primarily for comparison with VIC simulations over the basin. The flux tower observations could also be used as forcings to drive a point simulation.

Pressure units attribute in Stehekin image driver sample forcing are incorrect

The pressure variable units attribute in the sample image driver forcing dataset need to be updated. From:

netcdf Stehekin_image_test.forcings_10days.1949 {
dimensions:
    time = 240 ;
    lon = 5 ;
    lat = 4 ;
variables:
...
    float pres(time, lat, lon) ;
        pres:_FillValue = 9.96921e+36f ;
        pres:long_name = "PRESSURE" ;
        pres:column = 5 ;
        pres:units = "K" ;
        pres:description = "PRESSURE" ;
...

to:

        pres:units = "Pa" ;

Lake model sample data

@jhamman asked me if I could provide some sample data for the lake model. I think the primary goal was for incorporating into the travis build unit or science tests. But perhaps it's also useful to users as sample data.

I'm preparing data for Findley Lake, which researchers at UW (including Jeff Richey and Dennis Lettenmaier) studied for a while in the 1970s. I haven't found detailed observations, but Richey and Wissmar (1979) published some estimates of seasonal in/out fluxes for 1974 and 1975. I've taken some sparse data about lake bathymetry and fit a simple curve to get a depth-area relationship. So it should be close enough for us to confirm whether the model is getting reasonable results.

convert image driver humididty units

Currently: g/g (specific humidity)
New units: kPa (vapor pressure)

cc @yixinmao

xref: UW-Hydro/VIC#418

Add documentation to WalnutGulch

Add documentation summarizing how parameters were prepared.
Once observations from flux towers are added, if they are used as forcings to drive point simulations, how they were processed (gap-filling, etc) should also be documented.

Restructure repo

For the users' sake, I think it would be better if the repo had the following directory structure:
dataset/
....docs/ - documentation relevant to the dataset, including how inputs were prepared, which options are available, etc
....data/
........obs/ - any observations can go here; no restriction on file format
........sim/
............{classic|image}/
................parameters/
................forcings/
................state/
................results/

This would allow users to find all information related to a given dataset in a single location, regardless of which driver they use.