STaRS: A global daily 0–100 cm soil water storage dataset from satellite-constrained multi-model fusion (2002–2020)

STaRS is a global daily 0–100 cm soil-water storage dataset at 0.25° resolution, covering 19 June 2002 to 31 December 2020. It integrates ERA5-Land, GLDAS Noah, and MERRA-2 using grid-cell-specific weights derived from triple collocation analysis of daily standardized surface soil-moisture anomalies. ESA CCI and AMSR-E LPRM constrain the 2002–2006 period, while ESA CCI and ASCAT constrain the 2007–2020 period. The main variable, soil_water_0_100cm, is expressed in centimetres of water equivalent and is provided as monthly NetCDF files containing daily fields. The repository also includes source_count, TC error variances, valid-sample counts, fusion weights, and weight-filling source flags. STaRS is intended for hydrological monitoring, drought analysis, land–atmosphere studies, runoff and recharge assessment, and soil-water–groundwater investigations.