GLDAS_NOAH10_3H: Global Land Surface Parameters, 1948-2014

January 1948 to December 2014 of 3-hourly land surface parameters simulated from the Noah Model 3.6, forced by Princeton meteorological data. The dataset is part of NASA's Global Land Data Assimilation System Version 2.0 (GLDAS-2.0) and was reprocessed in November 2019, with further post-processing in October 2020.

Use Cases

• Modeling long-term soil moisture trends based on the Noah land surface model simulations.
• Analyzing 3-hourly land surface energy fluxes based on the meteorological forcing data.
• Studying historical snow and ice cover dynamics based on the terrestrial hydrosphere parameters.
• Calibrating other climate models based on the temporally consistent series from 1948-2014.

Strengths

• Covers a long historical period from January 1948 to December 2014.
• Provides 3-hourly temporal resolution for high-frequency analysis.
• Uses a consistent land mask (MOD44W) post-processed in October 2020 to correct inland water representation.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is not current, ending in 2014; GLDAS-2.1 covers 2000 to present.
• Forcing data is entirely model-based (Princeton) for this version, lacking the observational blend of GLDAS-2.1.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Simulated from the Noah Land Surface Model 3.6, forced by the Princeton University global meteorological forcing dataset.

Time Range

1948-01-01 to 2014-12-31

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 02:38:16.872355; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global at 1.0 x 1.0 degree resolution