FLDAS: Global Monthly Land Surface Parameters from Noah Model

NASA's FLDAS project provides a series of 28 land surface parameters simulated from the Noah 3.6.1 model. The data has a 0.10 degree spatial resolution, global coverage, and a monthly temporal resolution from January 1982 to present. The simulation is forced by a combination of MERRA-2 and CHIRPS rainfall data and was post-processed with a MODIS land mask in November 2020.

Use Cases

• Monitoring drought conditions and agricultural stress based on simulated soil moisture and other land surface states.
• Analyzing long-term trends in global hydrological cycles based on monthly data spanning from 1982.
• Validating other land surface or climate models using the 0.10 degree resolution global output.
• Studying anomalies in land surface conditions by comparing monthly data to the 35-year climatology.

Strengths

• Contains 28 distinct land surface parameters for analysis.
• Offers global spatial coverage at a 0.10 degree resolution.
• Provides a long temporal record with monthly data from January 1982.
• Data was post-processed with a MODIS land mask to correct inland water representation.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific ML tasks.

Provenance

Source

NASA Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) Land Data Assimilation System (FLDAS).

Collection Method

Simulated from the Noah 3.6.1 model, forced by MERRA-2 and CHIRPS data, and downscaled using the NASA Land Data Toolkit.

Time Range

January 1982 to present.

Freshness

Updated to present with monthly resolution.

Geography

Global (60S, 180W, 90N, 180E).