| Table of Contents |
| STOFS Disclaimer This is an experimental web portal for graphic visualization of the operational and experimental results from the storm surge and tide forecast systems being developed and tested by the National Ocean Service. 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. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Page
Description: STOFS-3D-Atlantic This page provides experimental web dissemination for the output and validation of the 3-D Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System for the Atlantic Basin (STOFS-3D-Atlantic). The Coastal & Marine Modeling Branch (CMMB) of the Coast Survey Development Laboratory (CSDL) has implemented the new STOFS-3D-Atlantic as v1.1.1. This STOFS-3D-Atlantic implementation includes: *support for 3D coastal flooding for the Atlantic basin (i.e., the U.S. East Coast, Gulf of Mexico, and Puerto Rico) *input from the National Water Model to include inland hydrology and extreme precipitation effects on coastal flooding *provision of surface currents for marine navigation use The user evaluation and feedback for STOFS-3D-Atlantic was officially collected up until September 1 2022, but we will always welcome feedback. The STOFS-3D-Atlantic Briefing to the NCEP Director occurred on September 1 2022. Operational implementation of STOFS-3D-Atlantic v1.1.1 occurred at the 12 UTC cycle on January 12 2023. Evaluation is always being sought to verify that STOFS-3D-Atlantic v1.1.1 maintains skill in the forecast guidance it provides for your use. Please send your feedback to: Greg Seroka [email] Edward Myers [email] Saeed Moghimi [email] |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Operational STOFS-3D-Atlantic Configuration Model: SCHISM, 3D baroclinic Forcing: GFS and HRRR for surface meteorological forcing (HRRR priority); G-RTOFS as open ocean boundary forcing; FES2014 for tidal forcing; NWM streamflow Mesh: Northwest Atlantic. Node count: 2,654,153. Elements count: 5,137,229 (triangular and quadrilateral). Total number of 3-D grid points: 24,088,817. Vertical layers: 9 on average, ranging from 49 in the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean to just 1 layer in floodplain areas. Resolution: ~2-7 km in the ocean; 1.5-2 km near the shoreline; 200-550 m for the floodplain; 50-200 m in the main channels; down to less than 10 m in small streams and levees. Along the U.S. coastline, the land boundary of the domain aligns with the 10-m contour above NAVD88, encompassing the coastal transitional zone most vulnerable to coastal and inland flooding. Computation: Computational time step: 150 seconds. In total, STOFS-3D-Atlantic currently simulates 1 day of simulation in 0.41 wall clock hours on 3,480 computational cores. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Model
Output Maximal forecasted water level elevation (maxele) on a native netCDF, 6-min forecast water level timeseries at 342 point locations, hourly snapshot fields in GRIB2 format on NDFD subgrids (CONUS East, Puerto Rico). Digital Output: netCDF and GRIB2 output is available via https://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/stofs/prod/. Graphics Output: this page provides links to reports including map plots of the maximal forecasted water level elevation (maxele), map plots of the maximal forecasted GFS winds, timeseries plots of the forecasted combined water levels along with the observed water levels where available, average and individual skill metrics for the point outputs where the observations are available. The reports are generated for operational STOFS-3D-Atlantic. The typical auto-generated model report provides the following information: Name (tag) of the experiment. The tag includes datestamp of the forecast cycle. It is printed on each plot. Please verify that you are looking at the latest cycle by checking the tag. Datestamp when the report was generated (UTC) Date span for the statistical analysis (UTC) Bounding box of the geographical coordinates (East longitudes/North latitudes) The section Maximal Forecasted Water Levels containing the maps of maxele fields for the whole domain and key sub-domains. The section Time-Series Metrics containing the output and the analysis of the water level point output. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Skill
Reporting Skill metrics is reported for the time series comparison of the point output against NOAA coastal tide gauges water level observations, where available. Metrics includes:
Metrics is computed for each individual point output station. All point output is provided in the Individual Time-Series Statistics sub-section of the report. Below is the example of the time series analysis for a given station, showing the modeled (blue) and observed (green) hydrographs, and the corresponding metrics:  Individual station analysis provides time series skill for the model on the date span where the results overlap the observations. On the example above, the statistics were computed over the 17.8 hours (178 6-minute points where both model and data are valid). Skill metrics is represented as both a text table and a dashboard, with acceptable ranges for each skill shown in green bars. The maps for each skill metrics of all valid individual stations are provided in the experiment report in the Average Time-Series Statistics sub-section of the report. The example below shows the map of RMSE values at each valid station. Values below a 0.2m threshold are plotted as circles. Values above 0.2m are plotted as upward-looking triangles, to help identify areas where the error is larger than a given threshold.  Stations without the observations only report modeled nowcast/forecast time series (blue curve). Average skill metrics for the experiment is shown in the table in the Average Time-Series Statistics sub-section of the report. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
STOFS Pre- and Post-Processing Software The pre- and post-processing software including skill computations has been developed by CSDL, in collaboration with other partners. The codes are written in Python3, and are publicly available from GitHub. The baseline library csdllib. The automated skill analysis application autoval. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Most Recent Model Output
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||