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.