Gridded Soil Moisture and Land Surface Evapotranspiration Global Fields for Climate Models

Monthly fields of soil moisture are widely used in numerical weather
predictions and climate simulations with general circulation models
(GCMs). Gridded global fields of normal monthly soil moisture and
land surface evapotranspiration were derived with a simple water
budget model that has precipitation and potential evapotranspiration
as inputs. Precipitation was observed from ground stations (Jaeger,
1976) and potential evapotranspiration was derived from observed
surface air temperatures (Spangler and Jenne, NCAR, 1984) using
Thornthwaite regression equations.

All of the input fields are gridded onto a 4 deg. latitude x 5 deg.
longitude global grid.

All of the input fields and several derived fields are available
(except sensible heat and radiation). Output fields are valid for land
points only. The data is available via anonymous FTP:

"ftp://climate1.gsfc.nasa.gov/walker/mintz/"

The folder includes data files, documentation files, and Fortran
source code.

Note: The primary investigator, Dr. Yale Mintz, passed away in April
1991.