NOAA's Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System (STOFS)

Details

• Alternative Title:
  STOFS
• Corporate Authors:
  United States. Office of Coast Survey; National Centers for Environmental Prediction (U.S.)
• Corporate Contributors:
  NOAA Office of Coast Survey
• NOAA Program & Office:
  NOS (National Ocean Service) ; OCS (Office of Coast Survey) ; NWS (National Weather Service) ; NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction)
• Description:
  This dataset collection describes the Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System (STOFS, formerly ESTOFS), which is a collaboration between the NOAA's Office of Coast Survey (OCS)/Coast Survey Development Lab (CSDL), University of Notre Dame, Virginia Institute of Marine Science and NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP).
  
  STOFS provides operational nowcast and forecast guidance for water level, water currents, water temperature, and salinity. This guidance supports a wide range of user communities, including disaster mitigation, marine navigation, emergency response, search and rescue, ecosystem health, and pollution transport. The NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) and U.S. Coast Guard Search and Rescue continuously rely on STOFS nowcast/forecast guidance for their operational requirements (operational forecasts, operational search and rescue, etc.). Furthermore, STOFS model output is being provided in S-100 Universal Hydrographic Model formats (e.g. S-104 water levels and S-111 surface currents) for NOAA's Precision Marine Navigation program.
  
  The STOFS system is composed of three main products: STOFS-2D-Global, STOFS-3D-Atlantic, and STOFS-3D-Pacific.
  
  STOFS-2D-Global provides users with nowcasts (analyses of near present conditions) and forecast guidance of water level conditions for the entire globe. STOFS-2D-Global has been developed to serve the marine navigation, weather forecasting, and disaster mitigation user communities.
  
  STOFS-3D-Atlantic and STOFS-3D-Pacific run daily (at 12 UTC) to provide users with 24-hour nowcasts (analyses of near present conditions) and up to 96-hour (Atlantic) and 48-hour (Pacific) forecast guidance of water level conditions, and 2- and 3-dimensional fields of water temperature, salinity, and currents. The water level outputs represent the combined tidal and subtidal water surface elevations and are referenced to xGEOID20B (Atlantic) and Local Mean Sea Level (LMSL) (Pacific).
• Content Notes:
  The Coast Survey Development Laboratory (CSDL) in NOAA/National Ocean Service (NOS)/Office of Coast Survey is upgrading the Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System (STOFS) to Version 3.1. A Service Change Notice (SCN) has been issued and can be found at The Coast Survey Development Laboratory (CSDL) in NOAA/National Ocean Service (NOS)/Office of Coast Survey is upgrading the Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System (STOFS) to Version 3.1. A Service Change Notice (SCN) has been issued and can be found at https://www.weather.gov/media/notification/pdf_2026/SCN26-51_STOFS.v3.1_Updated.aaa.pdf
• Keywords:
  • Sea Level
  • Storm Surge
  • Forecasting
  • STOFS
  • Ocean
• Series:
  Operational STOFS-3D-Global Configuration ; STOFS 2D-global ; STOFS 3D Atlantic ; STOFS 3D Pacific
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.25923/baw0-2722
• Identifier:
  gov.noaa.nmfs.inport: 79430
• Publisher:
  United States. Office of Coast Survey
• Document Type:
  Data Report
• Funding:
  NA21NOS0080197; NA22NOS47302223; NA23NOS4730238; NA23NOS4730239
• Temporal:
  2020 - Continuing
• Place as Subject:
  Global ; Atlantic Basin ; Pacific Basin
• Dataset:
  Office of Coast Survey; National Centers for Environmental Prediction. (2026). NOAA Three-dimensional Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System for the Pacific Basin (STOFS-3D-Pacific) Data set. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Accessed DATE. https://doi.org/10.25923/89a2-6691
• Context:
  Mixed geospatial files
• Type:
  NetCDF ; GRIB2 ; SHEF ; GPKG
• License:
  https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
• Rights Information:
  CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain
• Rights Statement:
  These data were produced by NOAA and are not subject to copyright protection in the United States. NOAA waives any potential copyright and related rights in these data worldwide through the Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication (CC0-1.0). ; STOFS model output is NOT total water level guidance. Actual water levels can be significantly higher than forecast due to waves and other components not presently included in STOFS. ; Please check with your regional National Weather Service forecast office for the official water level forecast.
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• File Type:
  [HTML]
• Collection(s):
  National Weather Service (NWS) ; National Ocean Service (NOS)
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:cf83e1357eefb8bdf1542850d66d8007d620e4050b5715dc83f4a921d36ce9ce47d0d13c5d85f2b0ff8318d2877eec2f63b931bd47417a81a538327af927da3e