WSIM-GLDAS: Global Water Surplus and Deficit Anomalies

ISciences and CIESIN at Columbia University produced the WSIM-GLDAS Monthly Grids, Version 1 dataset to characterize freshwater anomalies globally from 1948 to 2014. It provides gridded anomaly values for eight parameters, including temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, and composite water indices, at a 0.25-degree resolution. Data are expressed as return periods and standardized anomalies computed over 1 to 12-month integration periods, based on a Generalized Extreme Value distribution fitted to a 1950-2009 baseline.

Use Cases

• Assessing drought and flood risk based on return period calculations for composite water surplus and deficit indices.
• Analyzing trends in soil moisture and runoff anomalies to inform agricultural and water management planning.
• Modeling the relationship between temperature, precipitation, and evapotranspiration anomalies for climate impact studies.
• Benchmarking current hydrological conditions against a 60-year historical baseline (1950-2009).

Strengths

• Covers a 67-year temporal range from January 1948 to December 2014.
• Provides data for eight distinct hydrological parameters at a consistent global 0.25-degree spatial resolution.
• Calculates anomalies over four integration periods (1, 3, 6, and 12 months) for multi-scale analysis.

Limitations

• Data freshness is unclear; the underlying model run ends in 2014, but metadata lists a 2026 update date, suggesting the dataset itself is not current.
• Specific column names and exact data volume (row count, file size) are not provided in the available metadata.
• License information is not specified across the platforms.

Provenance

Source

ISciences, and Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) - Columbia University

Collection Method

Derived from land surface model outputs from NASA's Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS).

Time Range

January 1948 to December 2014

Freshness

2014-12-31 00:00:00

Geography

Global terrestrial surface