New NOAA dataset helps improve flood mitigation tools and flood risk assessments

The first modeled historical water level and wave datasets for the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf Coasts were released today by NOAA’s National Ocean Service (NOS). This comprehensive dataset, known as Coastal Ocean Reanalysis (CORA), advances NOAA’s ability to better serve the nation’s coastal communities and lays the foundation for future NOAA coastal flooding products.

The CORA dataset provides over 40 years of modeled historical water level and wave information every 500 meters along the U.S. coastline, or approximately every 400 meters. This long-term water level data was previously available only at NOAA tide gauge locations, which can be hundreds of miles apart in some areas of the coast.

The increased data resolution between CORA’s tide gauges closes gaps in data coverage along the coast, allowing more communities to access historical water level data to assess coastal flood risk.

“Historical coastal water level information is needed to assess changes in flood risk to communities and predict the likelihood of flooding,” said NOS Director Nicole LeBoeuf. “This new dataset will improve NOAA’s current flood risk assessment tools and help scientists develop new coastal flood products and services for the nation.”

New dataset provides the scientific research community with access to previously unavailable historical data that will help advance research, machine learning, and policy development in a variety of areas, including coastal resource management and energy planning. . CORA can be used by urban planners, engineers, flood management professionals, and decision makers to support coastal flood planning efforts with more accessible historical information.

“CORA provides new insights to coastal communities about how coastal flooding risk has changed over time,” said Project Leader, NOAA’s Center for Operational Ocean Products and Services (CO-OPS). said oceanographer and oceanographer Annalize Keeney.

“For example, in Charleston, South Carolina, CORA shows the full extent of the catastrophic inland flooding caused by Hurricane Hugo in 1989. When combined with NOAA’s long-term tide gauge data, CORA shows the full extent of the devastating inland flooding caused by Hurricane Hugo in 1989. understand past flood risks so they can better prepare and respond to future events.”

NOAA Service Improvements and Advancements

NOAA scientists will integrate CORA’s historical datasets into existing products such as sea level calculations and storm surge flood forecasts to provide valuable context. We are also using CORA to prototype monthly storm surge flood forecasts every 500 meters along the coast, providing more communities with timely information about flood risk.

Additionally, NOAA’s Office of Water Forecasting is working with NOS to combine the CORA dataset with the National Water Model to create multidecadal total water level simulations for the U.S. coastline. Combining these two datasets can make coastal flood inundation mapping more robust.

NOAA plans to release coastal ocean reanalysis datasets for the West Coast, Hawaii, and Alaska by the end of 2026.

The CORA dataset spans from 1979 to 2022 and is publicly available for download in a variety of formats through NOAA’s Open Data Dissemination Platform to support downstream applications. Additional information, maps, use cases, and related resources are available on NOAA’s Tides and Currents website as well as in NOAA technical reports detailing the methodology.

CORA is a community-based modeling effort made possible in collaboration with the Renaissance Computing Institute at the University of North Carolina. Model validation was conducted by the University of Hawaii Sea Level Center.

The National Oceanographic Service is the nation’s source of information on tides, ocean currents, coastal and Great Lakes water levels. The company’s scientific experts apply these data to a wide range of products and services to ensure safe and efficient navigation, support accurate mapping and charting, and protect coastal economies and infrastructure from extreme weather events. I will.