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ERA-Interim/Land: a global land surface reanalysis data set

Balsamo G, Albergel C, Beljaars A, Boussetta S, Brun E, Cloke H, Dee D, Dutra E, Muñoz-Sabater J, Pappenberger Florian, de Rosnay P, Stockdale T,
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 19, 389-407, 2015 https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-389-2015

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Abstract

ERA-Interim/Land is a global land surface reanalysis data set covering the period 1979–2010. It describes the evolution of soil moisture, soil temperature and snowpack. ERA-Interim/Land is the result of a single 32-year simulation with the latest ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) land surface model driven by meteorological forcing from the ERA-Interim atmospheric reanalysis and precipitation adjustments based on monthly GPCP v2.1 (Global Precipitation Climatology Project). The horizontal resolution is about 80 km and the time frequency is 3-hourly. ERA-Interim/Land includes a number of parameterization improvements in the land surface scheme with respect to the original ERA-Interim data set, which makes it more suitable for climate studies involving land water resources. The quality of ERA-Interim/Land is assessed by comparing with ground-based and remote sensing observations. In particular, estimates of soil moisture, snow depth, surface albedo, turbulent latent and sensible fluxes, and river discharges are verified against a large number of site measurements. ERA-Interim/Land provides a global integrated and coherent estimate of soil moisture and snow water equivalent, which can also be used for the initialization of numerical weather prediction and climate models.