The data is available from adaptwest.databasin.org
The gridded climate layers downloadable below are in Lambert Conformal Conic projection, at 1km resolution, and covering North America. The database consists of 23 million grid cells and is designed to capture climate gradients, temperature inversions, and rain shadows in the landscape of North America.
There are two data formats available. NetCDF (.nc) files, a non-proprietary format, are compatible with most GIS applications. ASCII (.asc) files can be transformed to ESRI grids, a native format of ArcGIS software, but are also compatible with many other GIS applications.
Two sets of variables are available for download. One consists of 27 biologically relevant variables, including seasonal and annual means, extremes, growing and chilling degree days, snow fall, potential evapotranspiration, and a number of drought indices. The second dataset consists of 48 monthly temperature and precipitation variables.
All archives have been compressed with the 7-zip utilty. To extract the data, use the 7-zip software, which is freely available for Windows (link) as well as Mac and Linux systems (link). Use of 7-zip in place of the standard zip format allows better compression, lower storage costs, and shorter download times.
