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).