Global Snow-free Leaf Area Index Dataset for Earth System Modeling – Year 2015

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 is provided in NetCDF format using a 5° × 5° spatial tiling scheme, with files corresponding to each 30° × 30° region packaged into a single tar archive, named as RG_{latN}_{lonW}_{latS}_{lonE}.LSAI500m.{YEAR}.tar. Due to the large volume of the full long-term dataset, this deposition provides data for the year 2015 only. Data for 2005 are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18098037, and data for other years can be provided upon request. The corresponding PFT dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18139027.