Global Land Surface Parameters from Noah Model at 3-Hourly Resolution

GLDAS-2.0 provides a series of land surface parameters simulated from the Noah Model 3.6, covering a period from January 1948 to December 2014. The dataset was reprocessed by NASA's Global Land Data Assimilation System and distributed by the GES DISC. It offers a temporally consistent series forced entirely with Princeton meteorological input data.

Use Cases

• Analyzing temporal trends in soil moisture and other state fields from 1948 to 2014.
• Modeling land surface energy and water fluxes using the Noah Model's simulated parameters.
• Studying the impact of meteorological forcing on land surface conditions across the global 0.25-degree grid.
• Comparing model outputs over inland water areas before and after the MOD44W land mask correction in October 2020.
• Investigating vegetation classification impacts using the Modified IGBP MODIS 20-category data within the model.

Strengths

• Data spans 67 years from 1948 to 2014, providing a long-term record.
• Simulations use a consistent 0.25 x 0.25 degree global spatial resolution.
• Post-processing in October 2020 corrected inland water masking issues using the MOD44W MODIS land mask.

Limitations

• The dataset's temporal coverage ends in December 2014 and is not current.
• Specific column names, row counts, and file sizes are not provided in the input.
• The forcing data is entirely from a single source (Princeton), which may limit representativeness.

Provenance

Source

NASA Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS), distributed by GES DISC.

Collection Method

Land surface parameters simulated from the Noah Model 3.6, forced by the Princeton University global meteorological forcing dataset.

Time Range

January 1948 to December 2014.

Freshness

Data was last updated in December 2014, but reprocessed with a corrected land mask in October 2020.

Geography

Global coverage at 0.25 x 0.25 degree resolution.