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The content provided on this page supports model development. These are not official NWS products and should not be relied upon for operational purposes. This web site is not subject to 24/7 support, and thus may be unavailable during system outages.

Please see our disclaimer for more information.

Welcome to the Marine Modeling and Analysis Branch of the Environmental Modeling Center at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction in College Park, Maryland. We are responsible for the development of improved numerical marine forecasting and analysis systems within the NOAA National Weather Service.

Operational Products

Global Real Time Ocean Forecasting System (RTOFS)

The global operational Real-Time Ocean Forecast System (Global RTOFS) at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction is based on an eddy resolving 1/12° global HYCOM (HYbrid Coordinates Ocean Model) and is part of a larger national backbone capability of ocean modeling at the National Weather Service in a strong partnership with the US Navy.

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Nowcast/Forecast Viewer
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Data Access
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Metrics
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Gulf Stream Location
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WOCE Sections
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About the Model
NOTICE: The Global Wave Ensemble System (GWES) was discontinued on 23 Sep 2020 and has been replaced by an improved GEFS-Waves, consisting of a one-way nesting of the WAVEWATCH III system with the recently upgraded GFS Ensemble Forecast System. The NOAA press release on the upgrade is here, and information on GEFS is available here.

The GEFSv12 Service Change Notice (issued 8/20/2020, PDF) is here, and you can find information on the evaluation of the GEFS-Waves portion of the GEFS system in the Model Evaluation Group (MEG) Summary page on the GEFSv12 upgrade here.

The model data is available four times a day (0, 6, 12, 18)Z from:
  • Production FTP (gefs.YYYYMMDD -->cycle-->waves)
  • NOMADS (Ocean Models-->GFS Ensemble Wave-->(grib filter or https file download).
Details on the products can be found here (scroll down to GEFS - Wave - Global).

NOAA WAVEWATCH III®

A third generation wave model run four times a day (00Z, 06Z, 12Z, and 18Z). Each run starts with 9-, 6- and 3-hour hindcasts and produces forecasts of every 3 hours from the initial time out to 180 hours (84 hours for the Great Lakes).

Model Suite

Sea Ice Home Page

The Polar and Great Lakes Ice group works on sea ice analysis from satellite, sea ice modeling, and ice-atmosphere-ocean coupling. Our work supports the Alaska Region of the National Weather Service, the Great Lakes Marine Forecasting group in the Cleveland NWSFO, and other groups, as well as the Environmental Modeling Center, of which the ice group is a part.

Marine Meteorology Group Products

Marine Archive

  • Fukushima Tracers
    NCEP/NWS deployed three-dimensional particle tracing within our Global RTOFS system to predict the long-term movement of radionuclides in the ocean shortly after the Japanese nuclear disaster near Fukushima.
  • Fukushima Surface Plume Study
    NCEP/NWS conducted a surface plume study using data from our Global RTOFS system to predict the first 100 days of movement of radionuclides in the ocean shortly after the Japanese nuclear disaster near Fukushima.