Forecast guidance of water levels from NOAA’s STOFS-2D-Global is now available on Amazon S3. STOFS-2D-Global provides users with nowcasts (analyses of near present conditions) and forecast guidance of water level conditions for the entire globe. The forecast outputs include water levels caused by astronomical tides alone (HTP), by sub-tidal water levels (isolated storm surge) (SWL), and their combination (CWL). The model is run four times per day, and forecasts are provided out to 180 hours (nowcast for previous 6 hours followed by 7.5 day forecast).
STOFS-2D-Global employs the ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC) finite element model as the hydrodynamic model core. Its unstructured model grid consists of 12,785,004 nodes and 24,875,336 triangular elements. Coastal resolution is up to 80 m for the U.S. West Coast and Alaska, up to 90-120 m for the Pacific Islands including Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, Marianas, Wake Island, Marshall Islands, and Palau, and up to 120 m for the U.S. East Coast and Puerto Rico. The flood plain extends overland to approximately 10 m elevation above MSL for the U.S. East Coast, and up to 20 m elevation above MSL for the Pacific Islands. The model run uses a computational time step of 6 s (implicit). In total, STOFS-2D-Global currently runs on 3,968 computational cores on Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System 2 (WCOSS2).
The files provided here include GRIB2 format for regional grids and SHEF format for station time series; both GRIB2 and SHEF are coincidentally provided to National Weather Service forecasters through AWIPS. The files are also provided here in native netCDF format, which include the full native resolution model grids and station time series.
This service is made possible through a public-private partnership enabled by the NOAA Open Data Dissemination (NODD).
The files are in NETCDF, GRIB2, and SHEF format. Both NOAA and NASA provide tools for accessing NETCDF files:
Panoply is an application from NASA that allows users to view and graph data that are contained in NETCDF files.
ncdump is a software library that can be used for extracting data from a NETCDF file. It is aimed at advanced users.
NOAA provides tools for accessing GRIB2 files:
NCEP GRIB2 tools include wgrib2 and g2lib.
wgrib2 is a utility to read and write grib2 files. This link provides more details on the utility.
More details on SHEF files are available here.
Access to the datasets is being provided on Amazon Web Services (AWS) via Simple Storage Service (S3). Files can be downloaded via the native AWS S3 API using tools such as the AWS CLI or AWS SDK libraries such as the Python boto3 package.
AWS S3 also provides direct HTTP access to the files, so datasets can be downloaded using any HTTP client such as web browser. To make discovering and accessing the data easier, a simple bucket explorer web application is also provided which allows you to navigate through the object key structure and download files using a web browser.
The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) for the S3 Bucket is: arn:aws:s3:::noaa-gestofs-pds.
Here is an example of using the AWS CLI to list a particular day in the S3 bucket:
aws s3 ls s3://noaa-gestofs-pds/stofs_2d_glo.YYYYMMDD/
Where YYYY = year, MM = month, DD = day
Additionally, an AWS Simple Notification Service (SNS) Topic has also been created to provide automated notifications when new files are added to the S3 Bucket. Users who operate their own infrastructure on AWS can integrate directly with this SNS Topic to trigger automated workflows using AWS Lambda or other services.
The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) for the SNS Topic is: arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123901341784:NewGESTOFSObject.
Files are organized by day, i.e. all four forecast cycles on a particular day are included in that day's directory, e.g.:
stofs_2d_glo.YYYYMMDD
(for 20230112 to present)
estofs.YYYYMMDD
(for 20201230 to 20230112)
Where YYYY = year, MM = month, DD = day
Within each directory, the below files are present. Use this key to interpret file names:
CC is the model run cycles (00, 06, 12, 18) for the nowcast and forecast runs
HHH is the forecast hour, i.e. 000 – 180.
cwl stands for combined water level (combined tides and surge); htp stands for harmonic tidal prediction (astronomical tides only); and swl stands for surge water level (storm surge only).
maxele stands for maximum water level elevation across entire forecast cycle; and maxwvel stands for maximum wind velocity across entire forecast cycle.
| File Name | Content | Resolution | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.alaska.{cwl,htp,swl}.grib2 | Regional Alaska gridded files (all forecast hours, one water level (m, MSL) type) | 6 km | GRIB2 |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.alaska.fHHH.grib2 | Regional Alaska gridded files (one forecast hour, all water level (m, MSL) types) | 6 km | GRIB2 |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.conus.east.{cwl,htp,swl}.grib2 | Regional Eastern CONUS gridded files (all forecast hours, one water level (m, MSL) type) | 2.5 km | GRIB2 |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.conus.east.fHHH.grib2 | Regional Eastern CONUS gridded files (one forecast hour, all water level (m, MSL) types) | 2.5 km | GRIB2 |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.conus.west.{cwl,htp,swl}.grib2 | Regional Western CONUS gridded files (all forecast hours, one water level (m, MSL) type) | 2.5 km | GRIB2 |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.conus.west.fHHH.grib2 | Regional Western CONUS gridded files (one forecast hour, all water level (m, MSL) types) | 2.5 km | GRIB2 |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.guam.{cwl,htp,swl}.grib2 | Regional Guam gridded files (all forecast hours, one water level (m, MSL) type) | 2.5 km | GRIB2 |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.guam.fHHH.grib2 | Regional Guam gridded files (one forecast hour, all water level (m, MSL) types) | 2.5 km | GRIB2 |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.hawaii.{cwl,htp,swl}.grib2 | Regional Hawaii gridded files (all forecast hours, one water level (m, MSL) type) | 2.5 km | GRIB2 |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.hawaii.fHHH.grib2 | Regional Hawaii gridded files (one forecast hour, all water level (m, MSL) types) | 2.5 km | GRIB2 |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.northpacific.{cwl,htp,swl}.grib2 | Regional North Pacific Ocean gridded files (all forecast hours, one water level (m, MSL) type) | 10 km | GRIB2 |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.northpacific.fHHH.grib2 | Regional North Pacific Ocean gridded files (one forecast hour, all water level (m, MSL) types) | 10 km | GRIB2 |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.puertori.{cwl,htp,swl}.grib2 | Regional Puerto Rico gridded files (all forecast hours, one water level (m, MSL) type) | 1.25 km | GRIB2 |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.puertori.fHHH.grib2 | Regional Puerto Rico gridded files (one forecast hour, all water level (m, MSL) types) | 1.25 km | GRIB2 |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.fields.cwl.maxele.nc | Maximum combined water level elevation field (m, MSL) on native grid across entire forecast cycle | Native model | NetCDF |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.fields.cwl.maxvel.nc | Maximum water current speed field (m/s) on native grid across entire forecast cycle | Native model | NetCDF |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.fields.cwl.maxwvel.nc | Maximum wind speed field (m/s) on native grid across entire forecast cycle | Native model | NetCDF |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.fields.{cwl,htp,swl}.nc | Hourly native model resolution water level field (m, MSL) forecast files | Native model | NetCDF |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.fields.cwl.vel.nc | Hourly native model resolution water velocity field (m/s) forecast files | Native model | NetCDF |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.points.{cwl,htp,swl}.nc | Six-minute station time series water level (m, MSL) forecast files at verification sites | -- | NetCDF |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.points.cwl.vel.nc | Six-minute station time series velocity (m/s) forecast files at verification sites | -- | NetCDF |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.points.autoval.cwl.nc | Six-minute station time series water level (m, MSL) forecast files at verification sites (shortened station list used for NOAA autovalidation) | -- | NetCDF |
| stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.points.{cwl,htp,swl}.shef | 30-minute station time series water level (m, MLLW) forecast files at verification sites | -- | SHEF |
| CC/rerun/ | This is the folder that holds the initial condition and forcing files for the system run on YYYYMMDD at cycle CC UTC. The files are stored for NOAA internal reference. Hence no further details are given here. | -- | -- |
| ../_archive/ | This is a folder that holds archives of STOFS and other models. The files are mainly stored for NOAA internal reference. Hence no further details are given here. | -- | -- |
| ../_not_active/ | This is a not active folder. The files are mainly stored for NOAA internal reference. Hence no further details are given here. | -- | -- |
| ../_para/ | This is the folder that holds the parallel run (i.e. before the model or model upgrade is operational) for STOFS-2D-Global. The files are mainly stored for NOAA internal reference. Hence no further details are given here. | -- | -- |
| ../_para2/ | This is the folder that holds a second parallel run (i.e. before the model or model upgrade is operational) for STOFS-2D-Global. The files are mainly stored for NOAA internal reference. Hence no further details are given here. | -- | -- |
| ../_post_processing/ | This is a folder that holds post-processing, including skill assessment (_autoval), skill metrics (_metrics), and full domain report (_test), for STOFS-2D-Global. The files are mainly stored for NOAA internal reference. Hence no further details are given here. | -- | -- |
| ../_stofs-3D-Atlantic_to_be_removed/ | This is a folder that holds STOFS-3D-Atlantic output and skill assessment files temporarily. These will be removed, so please refer to https://registry.opendata.aws/noaa-nos-stofs3d/ for STOFS-3D output. The files are mainly stored for NOAA internal reference. Hence no further details are given here. | -- | -- |
| ../COLDSTART_TEST/ | This is a folder that holds a cold start test from 2022 for STOFS-2D-Global. The files are mainly stored for NOAA internal reference. Hence no further details are given here. | -- | -- |
| ../logs/ | This is a folder that holds log and config files for STOFS-2D-Global skill assessment. The files are stored for NOAA internal reference. Hence no further details are given here. | -- | -- |
For example:
noaa-gestofs-pds/stofs_2d_glo.YYYYMMDD/stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.alaska.cwl.grib2
noaa-gestofs-pds/stofs_2d_glo.YYYYMMDD/stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.fields.swl.nc
noaa-gestofs-pds/stofs_2d_glo.YYYYMMDD/stofs_2d_glo.tCCz.points.htp.shef
etc.
For questions regarding data content or quality, visit the STOFS site. For any questions regarding data delivery not associated with this platform or any general questions regarding NOAA Open Data Dissemination, email nodd@noaa.gov.