DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16882724
title: CMIP6-based mosartwmpy simulations (inflow, storage) for CONUS hydropower facilities

description: This dataset provides simulated historical and future projections of daily inflows and storage (where applicable) for 1114 run-of-river and storage hydropower facilities within the contiguous United States (CONUS), based on a seven-member General Climate Model (GCM) ensemble from the state-of-the-art Coupled Models Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6). The CMIP6 GCMs (ACCESS-CM2, BCC-CSM2-MR, CNRM-ESM2-1, EC-Earth3, MPI-ESM1-2-HR, MRI-ESM2-0, and NorESM2-MM) are downscaled using statistical (i.e., DBCCA) and dynamical (i.e., RegCM) downscaling approaches based on two meteorological reference observations (Daymet and Livneh). The downscaled climate models are driven through two calibrated hydrologic models (VIC and PRMS) to simulate projected future hydrologic responses. 

Each ensemble member covers the 1980-2019 baseline and either the 2020-2059 or 2020-2099 future periods under four socioeconomic scenarios: SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5. Ensemble members downscaled using DBCCA, Daymet meteorological observations, and VIC hydrologic model extend through 2099. All other ensemble members extend through 2059.

These simulations provide representative inflow into hydropower facilities, as defined by the mosartwmpy point of diversion database, with facilities identified by the ID assigned by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The mosartwmpy CONUS hydropower maps the points of diversion for hydropower facilities to the 1/8th degree uniform grid used by the mosartwmpy model and was used to create this dataset.

This dataset is derived to support the SECURE Water Act Section 9505 Assessment for the US Department of Energy (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO). Pumped-storage hydropower is not included.

Version 1.1 is an expansion of Version 1 that added an additional GCM, EC-Earth3, additional socioeconomic scenarios (SSPs), and extended some ensemble members through 2099.

Modeling Background

This modeling underlies the non-Federal extension of the Department of Energy's Third Assessment of Federal Hydropower, a component of a multi-year study directed by Congress in Section 9505 of the SECURE Water Act (SWA, Public Law 111-11) of 2009. Simulated hydropower facility inflow and storage were used as input into a hydropower generation model (Zhou et al. 2023, Thurber et al. 2024) to simulate hydropower generation, which were aggregated and published in datasets by Balancing Authority and USGS HUC4 subregions. This dataset complements those hydropower datasets releases and the software release, for reproducibility. 

Data are provided for an ensemble of traces, each using a different source of simulated runoff and baseflow. A detailed description of the input data and their development can be found in the Third Assessment Report (Kao et al. 2023) and non-Federal extension journal article (Broman et al. 2024).

Data Structure

The dataset is provided in the parquet data format.

Hydropower Facility Data Files

Hydropower facility files use the naming convention [run]-daily_flow_storage-[version].parquet where run specifies the input runoff data used and version specifies the collection of input runoff data used. Within each file, data have the following structure:




Column Name
Unit
Description


date
-
date in YYYY-MM-DD format


eia_plant_id
-
EIA hydropower facility ID


flow
cms
simulated facility inflow


storage
m3
simulated facility storage (where applicable)




Related Datasets

The dataset is used as input to the wmpy_power hydropower generation model to produce CMIP6-based Multi-model Hydropower Projection over the Conterminous US, Version 1.1

A companion dataset derived from the same mosartwmpy modeling is also available CMIP6-based mosartwmpy simulations (inflow, storage, release) for CONUS multi-use reservoirs Version 1.1

References

Broman D, Voisin N, Kao S-C, Fernandez A, Ghimire GR. Multi-scale impacts of climate change on hydropower for long-term water-energy planning in the contiguous United States. Environmental Research Letters. 2024;19(9):094057. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad6ceb

Hejazi MI, Voisin N, Liu L, Bramer LM, Fortin DC, Hathaway JE, et al. 21st century United States emissions mitigation could increase water stress more than the climate change it is mitigating. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2015;112(34):10635. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1421675112

Kao, S.-C., M. Ashfaq, D. Rastogi, S. Gangrade, R. Uría Martínez, A. Fernandez, G. Konapala, N. Voisin, T. Zhou, W. Xu, H. Gao, B. Zhao, and G. Zhao (2022), The Third Assessment of the Effects of Climate Change on Federal Hydropower, ORNL/TM-2021/2278, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2172/1887712 

Thurber T, Vernon C, Sun N, Turner S, Yoon J, Voisin N. mosartwmpy: A Python implementation of the MOSART-WM coupled hydrologic routing and water management model. Journal of Open Source Software. 2021;6. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.03221

Thurber, T., Broman, D., Zhou, T., & Voisin, N. (2024). wmpy-power: A Python package for process-based regional hydropower simulation (v1.0.3). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14053013

Voisin N, Li H, Ward D, Huang M, Wigmosta M, Leung LR. On an improved sub-regional water resources management representation for integration into earth system models. Hydrol Earth Syst Sc. 2013;17(9):3605–22. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-17-3605-2013

Voisin N, Kao S-C, Broman D, Zhou T, Xu W, Ghimire GR, Gangrade S (2025). CMIP6-based Multi-model Hydropower Projection over the Conterminous US, Version 1.1. HydroSource. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. https://doi.org/10.21951/SWA9505V3/3001439

Zhou T, Kao S-C, Xu W, Gangrade S, Voisin N. Impacts of climate change on subannual hydropower generation: a multi-model assessment of the United States federal hydropower plant. Environmental Research Letters. 2023;18(3):034009. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acb58d