GLDAS_NOAH025_M_EP: Global Land Surface Variables at 0.25 Degree, Monthly from 2000

36 land surface fields from January 2000 to present, generated by NASA's Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS-2.1). The monthly data product is an average of 3-hourly simulations from the Noah Model 3.6, forced with a combination of model and observational data. This 'Early Product' stream has about a 1.5-month latency and is archived in NetCDF format.

Use Cases

• Modeling soil moisture and temperature dynamics based on the 36 included land surface fields.
• Analyzing long-term trends in terrestrial water storage and snow cover based on the monthly temporal resolution from 2000 onward.
• Assimilating land surface states into weather and climate forecasts based on the data's use of GDAS and GPCP forcing.
• Studying the impact of precipitation variability on land surface processes based on the integration of GPCP data.
• Validating other land surface or hydrological models against a globally consistent, model-observation blended dataset.

Strengths

• Contains 36 distinct land surface variables for holistic analysis.
• Provides continuous monthly data from January 2000 to the present.
• Uses a blend of model and observational forcing data (GDAS, GPCP, AGRMET).
• Offers a low-latency 'Early Product' stream with about 1.5-month delay.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The 'Early Product' stream is reprocessed and removed once final GPCP data is available, requiring version management.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) via the GES DISC.

Collection Method

Generated through temporal averaging of GLDAS-2.1 Noah 3-hourly data simulated with the Noah Model 3.6 in the Land Information System (LIS) Version 7.

Time Range

January 2000 to present.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 02:38:21.291255; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage at a 0.25 x 0.25 degree spatial resolution.