title: A land data assimilation system for sub-Saharan Africa food and water security applications.
abstract: Seasonal agricultural drought monitoring systems, which rely on satellite remote sensing and land surface models (LSMs), are important for disaster risk reduction and famine early warning. These systems require the best available weather inputs, as well as a long-term historical record to contextualize current observations. This article introduces the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) Land Data Assimilation System (FLDAS), a custom instance of the NASA Land Information System (LIS) framework. The FLDAS is routinely used to produce multi-model and multi-forcing estimates of hydro-climate states and fluxes over semi-arid, food insecure regions of Africa. These modeled data and derived products, like soil moisture percentiles and water availability, were designed and are currently used to complement FEWS NET's operational remotely sensed rainfall, evapotranspiration, and vegetation observations. The 30+ years of monthly outputs from the FLDAS simulations are publicly available from the NASA Goddard Earth Science Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) and recommended for use in hydroclimate studies, early warning applications, and by agro-meteorological scientists in Eastern, Southern, and Western Africa.
authors.affiliation: University of Maryland Earth Systems Science Interdisciplinary Center, College Park, Maryland 20740, USA.|NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA.
authors.forename: Amy
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7094-7599
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: McNally
authors.affiliation: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA.|SAIC, Inc., McLean, Virginia 22102, USA.
authors.forename: Kristi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Arsenault
authors.affiliation: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA.
authors.forename: Sujay
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.affiliation: University of California Santa Barbara, Department of Geography and Climate Hazards Group, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
authors.forename: Shraddhanand
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shukla
authors.affiliation: University of California Santa Barbara, Department of Geography and Climate Hazards Group, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
authors.forename: Pete
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Peterson
authors.affiliation: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA.|SAIC, Inc., McLean, Virginia 22102, USA.
authors.forename: Shugong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: University of California Santa Barbara, Department of Geography and Climate Hazards Group, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.|U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota 57105, USA.
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Funk
authors.affiliation: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA.
authors.forename: Christa D
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-1255-2876
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Peters-Lidard
authors.affiliation: U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota 57105, USA.
authors.forename: James P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Verdin