Global Snow-free Leaf Area Index Dataset for Earth System Modeling – Year 2005

The snow-free Leaf Area Index (LAI) dataset is a global monthly LAI product developed for land surface and earth system modeling. It covers the period from 1985 to 2020 at 500 m spatial resolution and aims to constrain the underestimation of LAI in snow-covered regions caused by snow contamination. The dataset was generated by integrating reprocessed MODIS Collection 6.1 LAI and GIMMS LAI4g products with plant functional type (PFT) information. Snow-affected areas were identified using satellite-based observations, and LAI was corrected at the PFT level using leaf lifespan constraints derived from the TRY plant trait database. The resulting snow-free LAI better represents the phenology of evergreen vegetation and is intended to support studies of vegetation–snow interactions, land surface processes, and earth system modeling. The dataset provides monthly LAI and SAI at 500 m spatial resolution globally, distributed as NetCDF-4 format files. Each file covers a 5° × 5° geographic region containing 1200 × 1200 pixels (0.00416667° or 15 arc-seconds per pixel) in the WGS84 coordinate system. The global land surface is divided into 1,447 regional tiles, with files named according to the convention RG_LatN_LonW_LatS_LonE.LSAI500m.YYYY.nc, where the latitude and longitude bounds define the tile coverage and YYYY indicates the year. Each file contains four primary data variables: MONTHLY_LC_LAI and MONTHLY_LC_SAI representing 500 m grid LAI and SAI values with dimensions (12 months × 1200 lat × 1200 lon), and MONTHLY_PFT_LAI and MONTHLY_PFT_SAI providing PFT LAI and SAI values with dimensions (12 months × 16 PFTs × 1200 lat × 1200 lon). Grid LAI (SAI) and PFT LAI (SAI) are both available for user selection according to research demands. The grid LAI (SAI) is calculated as the area-weighted average of PFT LAI (SAI). All LAI and SAI values are stored as unsigned byte integers with a scale factor of 0.1 and units of m2/m2, requiring multiplication by 0.1 to obtain physical values. The 16 plant functional types include various tree, shrub, grass, and crop categories ranging from tropical to boreal biomes. Coordinate variables (lat, lon, pft, mon) are included with appropriate metadata. Due to the large volume of the full long-term dataset, this deposition provides only the data for the year 2005 as a representative example. The complete annual datasets from 1985 to 2020 are archived separately and can be accessed through the following DOIs:Year 1985: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19973570Year 1986: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20022238Year 1987: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20022240Year 1988: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20022401Year 1989: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20033581Year 1990: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20022460Year 1991: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20033663Year 1992: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20033691Year 1993: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20033684Year 1994: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20049108Year 1995: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20022480Year 1996: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20049104Year 1997: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20049210Year 1998: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20049212Year 1999: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20065802Year 2000: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19729874Year 2001: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19736095Year 2002: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19759697Year 2003: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19772792Year 2004: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19782009Year 2005: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18098037Year 2006: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19782092Year 2007: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19784933Year 2008: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19804507Year 2009: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19804804Year 2010: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19805222Year 2011: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19827037Year 2012: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19839997Year 2013: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19839968Year 2014: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19840551Year 2015: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18130709Year 2016: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19883407Year 2017: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19910424Year 2018: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19910449Year 2019: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19910541Year 2020: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19943218