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-2.1 data products are now available in two production streams: one stream is forced with combined forcing data including GPCP version 1.3 (the main production stream), and the other stream is processed without this forcing data (the early production stream). Since the GPCP Version 1.3 data have a 3-4 month latency, the GLDAS-2.1 data products are first created without it, and are designated as Early Products (EPs), with about 1.5 month latency. Once the GPCP Version 1.3 data become available, the GLDAS-2.1 data products are processed in the main production stream and are removed from the Early Products archive.

This data product is for GLDAS-2.1 VIC 3-hourly 1.0 degree data from the main production stream. It was simulated with the VIC 4.1.2 Land Surface Model in Land Information System (LIS) Version 7. The data product contains 34 land surface fields from January 2000 to present. The GLDAS-2.1 data are archived and distributed in NetCDF format. The GLDAS-2.1 products supersede their corresponding GLDAS-1 products.

The GLDAS-2.1 simulation started on January 1, 2000 using the conditions from the GLDAS-2.0 simulation. This simulation was forced with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS) atmospheric analysis fields (Derber et al., 1991), the disaggregated Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) V1.3 Daily Analysis precipitation fields (Adler et al., 2003; Huffman et al., 2001), and the Air Force Weather Agency's AGRicultural METeorological modeling system (AGRMET) radiation fields. The simulation used with GDAS and GPCP only from 2000 to February 2001, followed by addition of AGRMET for March 1, 2001 onwards.

In October 2020, all 3-hourly and monthly GLDAS-2 data were post-processed with the MOD44W MODIS land mask. Previously, some grid boxes over inland water were considered as over land and, thus, had non-missing values. The post-processing corrected this issue and masked out all model output data over inland water; the post-processing did not affect the meteorological forcing variables. More information can be found in the GLDAS-2 README. The MOD44W MODIS land mask is available on the GLDAS Project site.

If you had downloaded the GLDAS data prior to November 2020, please download the data again to receive the post-processed data.