NLDAS-2: Hourly Land Surface Forcing Data for North America at 0.125° Resolution

Hourly meteorological forcing data for the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS-2) from January 1979 to the present. The data are provided on a 0.125-degree grid and contain ten fields, including surface temperature, humidity, wind, radiation, and precipitation, derived from the NCEP North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR). This secondary forcing dataset is produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Use Cases

• Modeling land surface processes based on hourly meteorological forcing fields.
• Analyzing long-term atmospheric trends based on data spanning from 1979 to present.
• Validating regional climate models based on spatially interpolated reanalysis data.
• Studying surface energy and water balance based on radiation, temperature, humidity, and precipitation fields.

Strengths

• Long temporal coverage from January 1979 to the present.
• High spatial resolution at 0.125-degree (approximately 12.5 km) grid spacing.
• Hourly temporal resolution for detailed process analysis.
• Derived from the authoritative NCEP North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR).

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Derived from NARR analysis fields, spatially interpolated and temporally disaggregated to the NLDAS grid and frequency.

Time Range

January 1979 to present

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 23:18:39.818160; freshness should be verified.

Geography

North America