NOAA Privacy Policy | NWS Disclaimer

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ALL WAVEWATCH III PRODUCT USERS
THIS IS OUR LEGACY WEBSITE. We will gradually phase out the old interface, and it will become unavailable at some future date. Please update your bookmarks and any links you may have to http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/waves, as this contains all of the previously-available and also new data and products.

Welcome to the former home pages for the operational wave models of NOAA/NCEP. As part of our continued affort to provide users with the best and up to date information, this website will be phased out soon (a date will be determined and posted here).

Please visit the new home page for NOAA/NCEP's wave models. We encourage you to get used to that page, and we would be happy to provide you with any information that would help you to that end.

Information available in the "old" pages still reflect the most up to date outputs from NOAA/NCEP's operational wave forecasting system.

There are several ways to access the model results and related information :

• The interactive data interface (JavaScript required) (troubleshooting) gives access maps, spectral plots and spectral text bulletins with a point-and-click interface (several model runs available).
• The tabular data interface gives access to the same data, but is organized with links in several large tables (most recent model run only).
• The text data interface gives access to this data in lists, without using any graphical web elements (most recent model run only).
• The products page gives a short description of all data accessible through the above interfaces, and instructions on getting additional binary data from our FTP site. The primer gives a short description of how to interpret data presented here.
• A historical archive of wave hindcast results produced with the latest version of the wave models can be accessed through an interactive (JavaScript required) or tabular interface.

The operational ocean wave predictions of NOAA/NWS/NCEP are performed using the wave model WAVEWATCH III (source code available) using operational products of NCEP as input. This combination of inputs and wave model is called NOAA WAVEWATCH III or NWW3. The wave model suite consists of global and regional implementations. As background information, a list of selected references and a chronological list of model changes are available. Finally, extensive validation data are available for the global, Alaskan Waters and Western North Atlantic models. Sign up for the MMAB mailing list for pertinent updates on these products.