This data set contains the monthly secondary forcing data "File B" 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 monthly. The file format is netCDF (converted from the GRIB format).
The NLDAS-2 monthly secondary forcing data were generated from the NLDAS-2 hourly secondary forcing data, as monthly accumulation for precipitation and convective precipitation and monthly average for other variables. Monthly period of each month is from 00Z at start of the month to 23:59Z at end of the month. The one exception to this is the first month (Jan. 1979) that starts from 00Z 02 Jan 1979, except for the monthly accumulated precipitation and convective precipitation that both start from 12Z 01 Jan 1979.
The monthly land surface forcing fields for NLDAS-2 are grouped into two files, "File A" and "File B". "File B" is the secondary (optional) forcing file and contains ten meteorological forcing fields. Details about the generation of the NLDAS-2.0 forcing datasets can be found in Xia et al. (2012).