MODFLOW-NWT model used in simulations of selected climate scenarios of groundwater availability in the North Fork Red River aquifer, southwestern Oklahoma

A previously developed model (https://doi.org/10.3133/sir20175098) was coupled with downscaled climate model data to determine the impact of climate variability on base flow and groundwater storage in the North Fork Red River aquifer, Oklahoma. The North Fork Red River aquifer is an alluvial aquifer that discharges groundwater to the North Fork Red River, which provides inflow to Lake Altus, an important water source for the surrounding communities. The impact of climate variability on hydrologic systems and the resulting effects on basins has become an important topic in assessing future water resources. Global climate projections from general circulation models, including the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), have been developed to improve the understanding of climate science and forecast future climatic conditions. Due to the impact of climate variations on groundwater resources, it is important to communicate the ranges of results with water resource managers. To approximate a range in future base flow conditions and flow into Lake Altus, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 climate data was downscaled to watershed scale using monthly Bias-Correction Spatial Disaggregation techniques. A time-series of scaling factors were developed and interpolated for three climate scenarios (central tendency, warmer-drier, and less warm-wetter) representing a range of future climate conditions for the period 2045–2074. These scaling factors were then applied to an existing soil-water-balance model dataset with climate data for the baseline period 1980–2009 to produce recharge and evapotranspiration (ET) estimations for this future period. The downscaled climate data was applied to the finite-difference numerical groundwater-flow model of the North Fork Red River aquifer using MODFLOW-2005 with the Newton formulation solver (MODFLOW-NWT) which was temporally discretized into 360 monthly transient stress periods representing the period 1980–2009. Three climate scenarios (central tendency, warmer-drier, and less warm-wetter) representing a range of future climate conditions for the period 2045–2074 were simulated. This USGS data release contains all of the input and output files for the simulations described in the associated journal article (https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxxxxxxxxxx)