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Fan & van den Dool 2004
Fan, Y. and van den Dool, H. (2004). Climate Prediction Center global monthly soil moisture data set at 0.5° resolution for 1948 to present. Journal of Geophysical Research 109: doi: 10.1029/2003JD004345. issn: 0148-0227.

We have produced a 0.5¿ ¿ 0.5¿ monthly global soil moisture data set for the period from 1948 to the present. The land model is a one-layer bucket water balance model, while the driving input fields are Climate Prediction Center monthly global precipitation over land, which uses over 17,000 gauges worldwide, and monthly global temperature from global Reanalysis. The output consists of global monthly soil moisture, evaporation, and runoff, starting from January 1948. A distinguishing feature of this data set is that all fields are updated monthly, which greatly enhances utility for near-real-time purposes. Data validation shows that the land model does well; both the simulated annual cycle and interannual variability of soil moisture are reasonably good against the limited observations in different regions. A data analysis reveals that, on average, the land surface water balance components have a stronger annual cycle in the Southern Hemisphere than those in the Northern Hemisphere. From the point of view of soil moisture, climates can be characterized into two types, monsoonal and midlatitude climates, with the monsoonal ones covering most of the low-latitude land areas and showing a more prominent annual variation. A global soil moisture empirical orthogonal function analysis and time series of hemisphere means reveal some interesting patterns (like El Ni¿o-Southern Oscillation) and long-term trends in both regional and global scales.

BACKGROUND DATA FILES

Abstract

Keywords
Global Change, Climate dynamics, Hydrology, Hydrologic budget, Hydrology, Soil moisture, Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics, Land/atmosphere interactions, soil moisture data set, land surface hydrology, drought/flood monitoring
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research
http://www.agu.org/journals/jb/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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