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Full catalog/GESTOFS
GESTOFS·dataset

Global storm-surge and tide water-level forecasts (NOAA)

NOAA Global Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System 2-D (STOFS-2D-Global)
atmosphere NOAA NOAA active
In plain English

What it measures. It estimates how high coastal water levels will rise around the entire planet, separating out the part caused by storm surge, the part caused by ordinary astronomical tides, and longer-term background changes. It gives both a picture of conditions right now and a forecast looking ahead.

How it's made. NOAA runs a two-dimensional ocean model (STOFS-2D-Global) four times a day, producing forecasts out to 180 hours, built with collaborators at several universities and water research institutes.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for ship navigation, weather forecasting, and warning coastal communities about flooding from storms and high tides.

What's measured

aws-pdsglobalcoastaldisaster responseweatherwaterenvironmentalmeteorologicaloceansclimate

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

NOTICE - The Coast Survey Development Laboratory (CSDL) in NOAA/National Ocean Service (NOS)/Office of Coast Survey has upgraded the Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System (STOFS, formerly ESTOFS) to Version 2.1. A Service Change Notice (SCN) has been issued and can be found "HERE" NOAA's Global Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System 2-D (STOFS-2D-Global) provides users with nowcasts (analyses of near present conditions) and forecast guidance of water level conditions for the entire globe. STOFS-2D-Global has been developed to serve the marine navigation, weather forecasting, and disaster mitigation user communities. STOFS-2D-Global was developed in a collaborative effort between the NOAA/National Ocean Service (NOS)/Office of Coast Survey, the NOAA/National Weather Service (NWS)/National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Central Operations (NCO), the University of Notre Dame, the University of North Carolina, and The Water Institute of the Gulf. The model generates forecasts out to 180 hours four times per day; forecast output includes water levels caused by the combined effects of storm surge and tides, by astronomical tides alone, and by sub-tidal water levels (isolated storm surge). The hydrodynamic model employed by STOFS-2D-Global is the ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC) finite element model. The model is forced by GFS winds, mean sea level pressure, and sea ice. The unstructured grid used by STOFS-2D-Global consists of 12,785,004 nodes and 24,875,336 triangular elements. Coastal resolution is at least 1.5 km globally, and up to 80 m for the U.S. West Co

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).