The National Forest Climate Change Maps project was developed by the Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) and the Office of Sustainability and Climate to meet the needs of national forest managers for information on projected climate changes at a scale relevant to decision making processes, including forest plans. The maps use state-of-the-art science and are available for every national forest in the contiguous United States with relevant data coverage. Currently, the map sets include variables related to precipitation, air temperature, snow (including snow residence time and April 1 snow water equivalent), and stream flow.

Historical (1975-2005) and future (2071-2090) precipitation and temperature data for the state of Alaska were developed by the Scenarios Network for Alaska and Arctic Planning (SNAP) (https://snap.uaf.edu). Average temperature values were calculated as the mean of monthly minimum and maximum air temperature values (degrees C), averaged over the season of interest (annual, winter, or summer). These datasets have several important differences from the MACAv2-Metdata (https://climate.northwestknowledge.net/MACA/) products, used in the contiguous U.S. They were developed using different global circulation models and different downscaling methods, and were downscaled to a different scale (771 m instead of 4 km). While these cover the same time periods and use broadly similar approaches, caution should be used when directly comparing values between Alaska and the contiguous United States.

Raster data are also available for download from RMRS site (https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/boise/AWAE/projects/NFS-regional-climate-change-maps/categories/us-raster-layers.html), along with pdf maps and detailed metadata (https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/boise/AWAE/projects/NFS-regional-climate-change-maps/downloads/NationalForestClimateChangeMapsMetadata.pdf).