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Full catalog/GFS BDP PDS
GFS BDP PDS·dataset

Global weather forecast model, up to 16 days (NOAA GFS)

NOAA Global Forecast System (GFS)
atmosphere NOAA NOAA active
In plain English

What it measures. A worldwide weather forecast covering dozens of variables, from temperature, wind, and rainfall to soil moisture and ozone in the air. It maps the whole globe at roughly 18-mile spacing between data points.

How it's made. Produced by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction using the GFS computer model and its data-assimilation system, which blends in fresh observations before each run.

How & where you'd use it. The backbone forecasters rely on to predict weather up to two weeks ahead, supporting agriculture, disaster planning, and everyday weather services.

What's measured

aws-pdsagricultureclimatedisaster responseenvironmentalmeteorologicalweather

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

NOTE - Upgrade NCEP Global Forecast System to v16.3.0 - Effective November 29, 2022 See notification HERE The Global Forecast System (GFS) is a weather forecast model produced by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). Dozens of atmospheric and land-soil variables are available through this dataset, from temperatures, winds, and precipitation to soil moisture and atmospheric ozone concentration. The entire globe is covered by the GFS at a base horizontal resolution of 18 miles (28 kilometers) between grid points, which is used by the operational forecasters who predict weather out to 16 days in the future. Horizontal resolution drops to 44 miles (70 kilometers) between grid point for forecasts between one week and two weeks. The NOAA Global Forecast Systems (GFS) Warm Start Initial Conditions are produced by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction Center (NCEP) to run operational deterministic medium-range numerical weather predictions. The GFS is built with the GFDL Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere Dynamical Core (FV3) and the Grid-Point Statistical Interpolation (GSI) data assimilation system. Please visit the links below in the Documentation section to find more details about the model and the data assimilation systems. The current operational GFS is run at 64 layers in the vertical extending from the surface to the upper stratosphere and on six cubic-sphere tiles at the C768 or 13-km horizontal resolution. A new version of the GFS that has 127 layers extending to the mesopause will be implemented for operation on February 3, 2021. These initial con

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).