NASA NEESPI: Global Monthly Satellite Data for Climate Modeling

A collection of global monthly satellite-derived geophysical datasets aggregated at 1x1 degree resolution. The data includes soil moisture averages and standard deviations (2002-2011), day and night land surface temperatures from MODIS Aqua (2002-2015) and Terra (2000-2015), active fire summaries, and vegetation indices. It was compiled for the Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI) to support research on surface processes and climate modeling.

Use Cases

• Modeling long-term soil moisture trends based on global monthly averages and standard deviations.
• Analyzing diurnal and seasonal land surface temperature cycles based on separate day-time and night-time data.
• Studying fire activity and its spatial distribution based on gridded active fire statistical summaries.
• Investigating vegetation dynamics and their relation to climate variables based on monthly vegetation indices.

Strengths

• Provides multiple consistent geophysical variables (soil moisture, temperature, fire, vegetation) for integrated analysis.
• Offers long temporal coverage, with some records spanning over a decade (e.g., land surface temperature from 2000 to 2015).
• Data is globally gridded at a consistent 1x1 degree spatial resolution for ease of use.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics and data structure must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale projects.
• Data freshness is unverified as the last update date is unknown.

Provenance

Source

NASA satellite instruments: AMSR-E on Aqua (for soil moisture) and MODIS on Aqua and Terra (for temperature, fire, vegetation).

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing data processed into global monthly statistical summaries at 1x1 degree grids.

Time Range

Time periods vary by product: soil moisture (2002-10-01 to 2011-09-30), land surface temperatures (2000-03-01 to 2015-06-30), vegetation indices (from July 2002).

Freshness

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Geography

Global coverage.