Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/WAVE ENSEMBLE REFORECAST
WAVE ENSEMBLE REFORECAST·dataset

20-year global ocean wave forecast history (NOAA)

NOAA Wave Ensemble Reforecast
atmosphere NOAA NOAA active
In plain English

What it measures. A 20-year record of global ocean wave forecasts, including wave height, how long apart the waves arrive, and which direction they travel. Output comes as global maps and as detailed time-series at hundreds of buoy locations.

How it's made. NOAA generated it by running the WAVEWATCH III wave model driven by GEFS ensemble winds, producing several forecast members per run at quarter-degree resolution out to 16 days, then quality-checking the full archive.

How & where you'd use it. It helps shipping, coastal safety, offshore operations, and researchers understand how wave forecasts perform and how often big-wave conditions occur, supporting better marine planning and risk assessment.

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

This is a 20-year global wave reforecast generated by WAVEWATCH III model (https://github.com/NOAA-EMC/WW3) forced by GEFSv12 winds (https://noaa-gefs-retrospective.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html). The wave ensemble was run with one cycle per day (at 03Z), spatial resolution of 0.25°X0.25° and temporal resolution of 3 hours. There are five ensemble members (control plus four perturbed members) and, once a week (Wednesdays), the ensemble is expanded to eleven members. The forecast range is 16 days and, once a week (Wednesdays), it extends to 35 days. More information about the wave modeling, wave grids and calibration can be found in the WAVEWATCH III regtest ww3_ufs1.3 (https://github.com/NOAA-EMC/WW3/tree/develop/regtests/ww3_ufs1.3). The 20 years of reforecast results were analyzed and quality-controlled. Three output types are available 1) Global wave fields, in grib2 format, with several variables including significant wave height, period, direction, and partitions; 2) Point output tables, in netcdf format, containing time-series of significant wave height, period and direction, for 658 points (latitude/longitude informed) at the positions of wave buoys; and, 3) For the same positions, spectral outputs are available, in netcdf format, containing the full spectra (2D directional spectrum). Each file refers to one forecast cycle with date (year, month, day) written in the file name. This effort has been funded by a NOAA OAR/NWS Service Level Agreement (SLA) whereby NOAA/OAR supports R&D and transition needed for mission delivery of climate services within NWS. The SLA projec

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).