Earth Data School
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Full catalog/CFS
CFS·dataset

Global ocean-land-atmosphere forecast model (NOAA)

NOAA Climate Forecast System (CFS)
atmosphere NOAA NOAA active
In plain English

What it measures. A computer model of how Earth's oceans, land, and atmosphere interact, producing hourly forecasts of many weather and climate variables worldwide.

How it's made. Run by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction as the operational CFSv2 system, pulling in satellite, balloon, aircraft, and surface observations at roughly 56 km resolution.

How & where you'd use it. Used for seasonal and longer-range outlooks that bridge the gap between daily weather forecasts and climate projections.

What's measured

aws-pdsagricultureclimatemeteorologicalweather

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span— → ongoing

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

The Climate Forecast System (CFS) is a model representing the global interaction between Earth's oceans, land, and atmosphere. Produced by several dozen scientists under guidance from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), this model offers hourly data with a horizontal resolution down to one-half of a degree (approximately 56 km) around Earth for many variables. CFS uses the latest scientific approaches for taking in, or assimilating, observations from data sources including surface observations, upper air balloon observations, aircraft observations, and satellite observations. Please note that the data in this bucket are the CFSv2 Operational Forecasts. To obtain other CFSv2 products such as the Operational Analysis, please visit our website.

Get the data

noaa_access.py
# NOAA Open Data on AWS — public S3, no login
import s3fs

fs = s3fs.S3FileSystem(anon=True)
# find this dataset's bucket in the docs link in the sidebar, then:
# files = fs.ls("noaa-<bucket>/...")
# open NetCDF/GRIB with xarray, COGs with rioxarray
NOAA Open Data is on public AWS S3 — no login at all (anonymous access).