NCEI will decommission the Global Ocean Currents Database and web portal on 15 May, 2025. Upon termination, the underlying data files will be available at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/global-ocean-currents-database, but this website will no longer exist. Comments and questions may be sent to ncei.info@noaa.gov.
The dataset contains surface ocean currents derived from drifting platforms along a path through space with monotonically increasing times. The date coverage of the dataset is from 1894 to 1993. Data are stored in the GOCD text format or NetCDF format for trajectory feature type.
NOTE: The actual retrieval time will depend on the volume of the dataset being retrieved. Users may experience map problems when there are too many data points. The data points are drawn in ascending order of their ocean current speed values. Hence, the largest available values are seen on top when there are multiple data points at the same location.
Category | Description | Data Download Link | Ship Drift | This data set contains over 4 million surface current observations between 1894 and 1993, almost all obtained by the ship drift method. |
○ GOCD text format files |
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