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Full catalog/GFS PDS
GFS PDS·dataset

Global weather forecast model via Unidata (NOAA GFS)

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

What it measures. The same worldwide weather forecast as the main GFS, covering dozens of variables such as temperature, winds, precipitation, soil moisture, and atmospheric ozone, mapped across the whole globe at about 18-mile resolution.

How it's made. This is a copy of NOAA's Global Forecast System model output, distributed through the Unidata community for easier access.

How & where you'd use it. Drives weather prediction out to roughly 16 days and feeds research, education, and applications in farming and emergency response.

What's measured

aws-pdsagricultureclimateweatherenvironmentaldisaster response

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 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.

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).