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Full catalog/NLDAS_VIC0125_H
NLDAS_VIC0125_H·v2.0·dataset

Hourly land water and energy budget (US model)

NLDAS VIC Land Surface Model L4 Hourly 0.125 x 0.125 degree V2.0 (NLDAS_VIC0125_H) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 4 active
In plain English

What it measures. An hourly accounting of water and energy at the land surface across North America — 44 simulated fields covering things like soil moisture, snow, and surface energy balance.

How it's made. Generated by the VIC land-surface model (not a satellite) as part of the North American Land Data Assimilation System, on a roughly 12-km grid going back to 1979.

How & where you'd use it. Used for drought monitoring, water-resource studies, and understanding how water and energy move at the land surface over the continent.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION › HEAT FLUXATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION › LONGWAVE RADIATIONATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION › SHORTWAVE RADIATIONATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE › SURFACE TEMPERATUREATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR › WATER VAPOR PROCESSES › EVAPORATIONATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR › WATER VAPOR PROCESSES › EVAPOTRANSPIRATIONATMOSPHERE › PRECIPITATION › LIQUID PRECIPITATION › RAINATMOSPHERE › PRECIPITATION › SOLID PRECIPITATION › SNOWBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › CANOPY CHARACTERISTICSBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › LEAF CHARACTERISTICSBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › VEGETATION COVERLAND SURFACE › SOILS › SOIL MOISTURE/WATER CONTENTLAND SURFACE › SURFACE RADIATIVE PROPERTIES › ALBEDOLAND SURFACE › SURFACE THERMAL PROPERTIES › LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1979-01-02 → ongoing
  • Measured byVIC-LSM (NOT APPLICABLE)
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • Spatial extent-125, 25, -67, 53
  • 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

This data set contains forty-four fields simulated from the VIC land-surface model (LSM) for Phase 2 of the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS-2). The data are in 1/8th degree grid spacing and range from Jan 1979 to the present. The temporal resolution is hourly. The file format is netCDF (converted from the GRIB format). The VIC model was developed at the University of Washington and Princeton University as a macroscale, semi-distributed, grid-based, hydrologic model [Liang et al., 1994; Wood et al., 1997]. The full water and energy balance modes of VIC were used for NLDAS-2. VIC uses three soil layers, with thicknesses that vary spatially. The root zone depends on the vegetation type and its root distribution, and can span all three soil layers. The VIC model includes a two-layer energy balance snow model [Cherkauer et al., 2003]. Details about the NLDAS-2 configuration of the VIC LSM can be found in Xia et al. (2012). The version of the VIC model for the NLDAS-2 VIC data available from the NASA GES DISC is VIC-4.0.3; this version of the VIC model is the same as used in Sheffield et al. (2003).

Get the data

nldas_vic0125_h_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="NLDAS_VIC0125_H",
    version="2.0",
    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.