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Full catalog/UFS S2S
UFS S2S·dataset

Experimental weeks-to-seasons weather forecasts (NOAA UFS)

NOAA Unified Forecast System Subseasonal to Seasonal Prototypes
atmosphere NOAA NOAA active
In plain English

What it measures. It contains test forecasts looking weeks to months ahead, covering all the big weather pieces at once: the atmosphere, land, ocean, sea ice, and ocean waves. Think temperature, precipitation, and ocean conditions stretched out over a longer horizon than a normal weather forecast.

How it's made. NOAA produced it by running early prototype versions (5 through 8) of its coupled atmosphere-ocean Unified Forecast System and re-running them over past periods, as a development step toward the next generation of US national weather prediction.

How & where you'd use it. Researchers use it to test how well long-range forecasting works and to give feedback that shapes future operational models. It feeds work in agriculture planning, climate outlooks, and disaster preparedness, but it is experimental rather than an official forecast product.

What's measured

aws-pdsagricultureclimatedisaster responseenvironmentalmeteorologicalweatheroceans

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 Unified Forecast System Subseasonal to Seasonal prototypes consist of reforecast data from the UFS atmosphere-ocean coupled model experimental prototype version 5, 6, 7, and 8 produced by the Medium Range and Subseasonal to Seasonal Application team of the UFS-R2O project. The UFS prototypes are the first dataset released to the broader weather community for analysis and feedback as part of the development of the next generation operational numerical weather prediction system from NWS. The datasets includes all the major weather variables for atmosphere, land, ocean, sea ice, and ocean waves. Acknowledgment - The Unified Forecast System (UFS) atmosphere-ocean coupled model experimental version # data used in this study are made available through the UFS Research to Operations (UFS-R2O) project sponsored by the National Weather Service (NWS) Office of Science and Technology Integration (OSTI) Modeling Program Division and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) Weather Program Office (WPO).

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).