NCA-LDAS: Daily US Land Surface Hydrology Reanalysis, 1979-2016

January 1979 to December 2016 daily terrestrial water and energy balance data for the continental United States. The dataset is a high-resolution reanalysis produced by NASA using the Noah 3.3 land-surface model with assimilation of multiple satellite data records. It includes 42 variables such as soil moisture, snow cover, precipitation, and surface temperature.

Use Cases

• Modeling soil moisture trends based on assimilated satellite microwave sensor data.
• Analyzing snow cover and snow depth dynamics based on assimilated MODIS and IMS products.
• Studying irrigation impacts on water balance using assimilated MODIS irrigation intensity estimates.
• Investigating long-term trends in land-surface fluxes like precipitation and latent heat.
• Assessing streamflow and runoff for water resource management based on routing variables.

Strengths

• Covers a 38-year time series from 1979 to 2016.
• Assimilates data from multiple satellite sources including SMMR, SSM/I, AMSR-E, ASCAT, AMSR-2, SMOS, and SMAP.
• Includes 42 variables covering fluxes, stores, states, and routing.
• Provides data at a high spatial resolution of 0.125 x 0.125 degrees.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is limited to the continental United States, which may not be suitable for global studies.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Simulated using the Noah Version 3.3 land-surface model within NASA's Land Information System (LIS), with multivariate assimilation of satellite Environmental Data Records.

Time Range

1979-01-01 to 2016-12-31

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 23:16:24.913519; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Continental United States