The rain gauge data available in South America are very sparse and strongly biased towards more populated areas near the edge of the continent or near inland cities along the main river courses. Results of the study show the South American Land Data Assimilation System (SALDAS) dataset has a positive bias in temperature typically between 0 and 4 K. This paper describes the creation and validation of the meteorological forcing datasets used with the SALDAS System. Land surface models (LSMs) are an important component of numerical weather prediction (NWP) and global climate models, which can also be used to assess surface hydrology
