GLDAS VIC: Monthly Global Land Surface Variables, 1948-2014

NASA's GLDAS-2.0 VIC monthly data provides a temporally consistent series of land surface variables from January 1948 to December 2014. The data is generated by the VIC 4.1.2 Land Surface Model forced with Princeton meteorological data and archived in NetCDF format. A post-processing correction in October 2020 applied a MODIS land mask to accurately exclude data over inland water bodies.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term trends in soil moisture and temperature based on the described land surface variables.
• Validating hydrological and climate models using the globally simulated, temporally consistent data series.
• Studying the water and energy cycles at the land surface based on the assimilated meteorological forcing.
• Investigating snow and ice dynamics in the terrestrial hydrosphere based on the included model outputs.

Strengths

• Covers a 66-year temporal range from 1948 to 2014, providing long-term consistency.
• Uses a single forcing dataset (Princeton) for the entire period, reducing temporal discontinuities.
• Post-processed with a MODIS land mask to correct data over inland water, improving accuracy.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data ends in 2014; freshness should be verified for applications requiring recent observations.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Simulated by the VIC 4.1.2 Land Surface Model within the Land Information System (LIS) Version 7, forced by the Princeton meteorological forcing data set.

Time Range

January 1948 to December 2014

Freshness

Last metadata update was 2026-03-13, but data coverage ends in 2014.

Geography

Global at 1.0 x 1.0 degree resolution