NLDAS Mosaic Land Surface Model L4 Hourly 0.125 x 0.125 degree V002 (NLDAS_MOS0125_H) at GES DISC

This data set contains a series of land surface parameters simulated from the Mosaic land-surface model (LSM) for Phase 2 of the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS-2). The data are in 1/8th degree grid spacing and range from Jan 1979 to the present. The temporal resolution is hourly. The file format is WMO GRIB-1.

Details about the NLDAS-2 configuration of the Mosaic LSM can be found in Xia et al. (2012).

Mosaic was developed by Koster and Suarez (1994, 1996) to account for subgrid vegetation variability with a tile approach. Each vegetation tile carries its own energy and water balance and soil moisture and temperature. Each tile has three soil layers, with the first two in the root zone. In NLDAS, Mosaic is configured to support a maximum of 10 tiles per grid cell with a 5% cutoff that ignores vegetation classes covering less than 5% of the cell. Additionally in NLDAS, all tiles of Mosaic in a grid cell have a predominant soil type and three soil layers with fixed thickness values of 10, 30, and 160 cm (hence constant rooting depth of 40 cm and constant total column depth of 200 cm).

The Mosaic LSM was forced by the hourly NLDAS-2 forcing "File A" files, and contains thirty-seven fields. The data set applies a user-defined parameter table to indicate the contents and parameter number. The GRIBTAB shows a list of parameters for this data set, along with their Product Definition Section (PDS) IDs and units.

For information about the vertical layers of the Soil Moisture Content (PDS 086) and Soil Temperature (PDS 085), please see the README Document or the GrADS ctl file.