The experimental Global Water Cycle and Drought Monitor is operated by the Land Surface Hydrology Group at Princeton University with support from the International Hydrology Program of UNESCO.
The system provides near realtime monitoring of land surface hydrological conditions. The hydrologic cycle is modeled using the VIC model which is forced by a combined model/observation dataset of meteorological forcings (precipitation, temperature, etc). Precipitation is currently taken from the PERSIANN and TRMM datasets. Temperature and windspeed are taken from GTS gauge reports. The monitor is updated every day at 2 days behind realtime.
Available outputs include water budget components (precipitation, evapotranspiration, runoff, snow and soil moisture) and derived products such as current drought conditions.
