TerraClimateDownloader QGIS Plugin

🌍 Overview

TerraClimateDownloader is a QGIS plugin that allows you to directly download and clip TerraClimate datasets (monthly climate & water balance variables, 1958–2024) via OPeNDAP.

It connects to the TerraClimate THREDDS server, extracts a bounding-box subset using xarray and rioxarray, saves a temporary GeoTIFF, and then clips it to any polygon boundary in your QGIS project using GDAL.

• 📅 Supports any year 1958–2024
• 🌡️ Supports all TerraClimate variables (ppt, tmax, tmin, vap, vpd, aet, etc.)
• 🗺️ Clips raster outputs to any vector boundary
• ⚡ Adds the result automatically to your QGIS project
• 🔍 Available in Processing Toolbox and Plugins menu

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📦 Installation

1. Download the latest release ZIP:
   TerraClimateDownloader.zip

2. In QGIS:

   • Go to Plugins → Manage and Install Plugins → Install from ZIP
   • Select TerraClimateDownloader.zip
   • Enable the plugin

3. Access it from:

   • Processing Toolbox → TerraClimateDownloader → Clip TerraClimate (OPeNDAP) to Layer (GDAL)
   • Plugins Menu / Toolbar → TerraClimate Downloader

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⚙️ Requirements

This plugin requires the following Python packages installed into your QGIS Python environment:

• xarray
• rioxarray
• numpy

Optional (recommended for performance):

• netCDF4
• dask

Installation

On Windows (OSGeo4W Shell / QGIS Python env):

python -m pip install --upgrade pip
python -m pip install xarray rioxarray "numpy>=1.24" netCDF4 dask

On Linux/macOS:

pip3 install --user xarray rioxarray numpy netCDF4 dask

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🚀 Usage

1. Load a polygon boundary layer into QGIS (e.g., a country shapefile).

2. Run TerraClimate Downloader (Processing Toolbox or Plugins menu).

3. Configure:

   • Input polygon layer
   • Variable (ppt, tmax, tmin, etc.)
   • Year (1958–2024)
   • TIME_INDEX = -1 for all months (multiband), or 1–12 for a single month

4. Click Run → A clipped GeoTIFF is downloaded, processed, and added to the map.

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Video Tutorial

https://youtu.be/IqF5fW00lWU?si=TjLjWCiLSusx5QcQ

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📖 Data Source

TerraClimate Dataset: Abatzoglou, J.T., S.Z. Dobrowski, S.A. Parks, K.C. Hegewisch (2018). TerraClimate, a high-resolution global dataset of monthly climate and climatic water balance from 1958–2015. Scientific Data, 5:170191. DOI:10.1038/sdata.2017.191

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🎨 Credits

• Plugin Author: Hemed Lungo
• Icon: by Fusion5085 (licensed for free use)
• Dataset: TerraClimate, Abatzoglou et al. (2018)

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📜 License

This plugin is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

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🙌 Acknowledgements

Thanks to the QGIS community and GDAL/xarray developers for the tools that make this plugin possible.