Daily groundwater and soil moisture model (GLDAS+GRACE)
What it measures. Daily estimates of water stored in the land, including soil moisture and groundwater, for quarter-degree grid cells, produced by a land model that has been nudged to match satellite gravity observations.
How it's made. Generated by NASA's GLDAS Catchment land-surface model combined with GRACE satellite data through data assimilation, which corrects the model using real measurements of changing water mass.
How & where you'd use it. Valuable for tracking droughts, groundwater depletion, and overall water availability over time, supporting water-resource management and hydrology research.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2003-02-01 → ongoing
- Measured byCatchment-LSM (NOT APPLICABLE)
- Processing levelLevel 4
- Spatial extent-180, -60, 180, 90
- StatusACTIVE
What you can do with it
- Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
- Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
- Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description
NASA Global Land Data Assimilation System Version 2 (GLDAS-2) has three components: GLDAS-2.0, GLDAS-2.1, and GLDAS-2.2. GLDAS-2.0 is forced entirely with the Princeton meteorological forcing input data and provides a temporally consistent series from 1948 through 2014. GLDAS-2.1 is forced with a combination of model and observation data from 2000 to present. GLDAS-2.2 product suites use data assimilation (DA), whereas the GLDAS-2.0 and GLDAS-2.1 products are "open-loop" (i.e., no data assimilation). The choice of forcing data, as well as DA observation source, variable, and scheme, vary for different GLDAS-2.2 products. GLDAS-2.2 is new to the GES DISC archive and currently includes a main product from CLSM-F2.5 with Data Assimilation for the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE-DA) from February 2003 to present. The GLDAS-2.2 data are available in two production streams: one with GRACE data assimilation outputs (the main production stream), and one without GRACE-DA (the early production stream). Since the GRACE data have a 2-6 month latency, the GLDAS-2.2 data are first created without GRACE-DA, and are designated as the Early Product (EP), with about 1 month latency. Once the GRACE data become available, the GLDAS-2.2 data are processed with GRACE-DA in the main production stream and are removed from the Early Product archive. The GLDAS-2.2 GRACE-DA product was simulated with Catchment-F2.5 in Land Information System (LIS) Version 7. The data product contains 24 land surface fields from February 1, 2003 to present. The simulation started on February 1, 2003 using the conditions from the GLDAS-2.0 Daily Catchment model simulation, forced with the meteorological analysis fields from the operational European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Integrated Forecasting System. The total terrestrial water anomaly observation from GRACE satellite was assimilated (Li et al, 2019). Due to the data agreement with ECMWF, this GLDAS-2.2 daily product does not include the meteorological forcing fields. The GLDAS-2.2 data are archived and distributed in NetCDF format.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="GLDAS_CLSM025_DA1_D",
version="2.2",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9), # your area (W,S,E,N)
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"), # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream straight from GES_DISC Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Access the data via HTTPS. GET DATA
- Access the data via the OPeNDAP protocol. USE SERVICE API
- README Document VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- How to read and plot the data. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- GES DISC Hydrology Documentation VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Use the Earthdata Search to find and retrieve data sets across multiple data centers. GET DATA
- GLDAS_CLM10SUBP_3H Status and Related Data Collections VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- GLDAS LSM Description VIEW RELATED INFORMATION