GLDAS: Global Land Water Storage Anomalies for GRACE Satellite Validation

Monthly 1-degree gridded land water storage anomalies from NASA's GLDAS Noah model. These aggregated anomalies, representing the sum of soil moisture, snow, and canopy water, are temporally aligned with GRACE and GRACE-FO satellite observation days. The data is provided in NetCDF format for direct comparison against satellite-derived terrestrial water storage measurements.

Use Cases

• Validate GRACE and GRACE-FO satellite observations of terrestrial water storage based on the provided land water anomalies.
• Analyze global trends in soil moisture, snow, and canopy water storage based on the aggregated monthly anomalies.
• Model hydrological processes and water budget components using the gridded output from the Noah land surface model.
• Assess climate change impacts on continental water storage based on the long-term, globally-gridded time series.

Strengths

• Data is produced by NASA, indicating a high level of scientific authority.
• Anomalies are computed over the exact same days as GRACE-FO monthly solutions, ensuring temporal alignment for validation.
• Data is provided on a consistent global 1-degree latitude/longitude grid.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Output from the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) using the Noah land surface model.

Time Range

Monthly time series, temporally aligned with GRACE and GRACE-FO mission periods.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 23:35:01.309436; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage on a 1-degree latitude/longitude grid.