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Full catalog/sportlis
sportlis·v1·dataset

Modeled land-surface conditions for weather forecasts (SPoRT)

NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Land Information System (LIS)
land NASA GHRC_DAAC Level 4 ASCIIBinaryGRIB1GRIB2
In plain English

What it measures. Modeled, detailed maps of land-surface conditions like soil moisture and related variables across the United States, produced on a fine grid.

How it's made. Not from a satellite instrument but from a computer land-surface model (the Noah model) run on observations, generated both as a long historical record and updated in real time every six hours.

How & where you'd use it. Designed to support short-term weather forecasting and situational awareness, giving forecasters up-to-date pictures of how wet or dry the land is.

What's measured

AGRICULTURE › SOILS › SOIL MOISTURE/WATER CONTENTLAND SURFACE › SOILS › SOIL MOISTURE/WATER CONTENT › ROOT ZONE SOIL MOISTURELAND SURFACE › SOILS › SOIL MOISTURE/WATER CONTENT › SURFACE SOIL MOISTURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1981-01-01 → 2025-12-31
  • Measured byCOMPUTERS
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • Spatial extent-124.925, 24.396, -66.885, 52.915
  • FormatsASCII, Binary, GRIB1, GRIB2
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

The Short-term Prediction Research and Transition Land Information System (SPoRT-LIS) is a gridded observations-driven run of the Noah land surface model (LSM) in both reanalysis and real-time mode. The long-term climatology and real-time solution is driven by the North American Land Data Assimilation System – version 2. The SPoRT-LIS consists of a 1929 x 929 grid of the Noah LSM at 0.03-deg grid spacing in the west-east, and south-north dimensions, spanning -124.925 to -67.085 deg E longitude, and 25.075 to 52.915 deg N latitude. A climatology run was made spanning 1981-2013, then extended into real-time beginning in April of 2015. The real-time production run has continued since then to present, running in a cycled mode every 6 hours.

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="sportlis",
    version="1",
    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 GHRC_DAAC
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.