The Global Forecast System (GFS) is a National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) weather forecast model that generates data for dozens of atmospheric and land-soil variables, including temperatures, winds, precipitation, soil moisture, and atmospheric ozone concentration. The system
NCEI, the World Data Service for Geophysics (including Tsunamis), and the UNESCO-IOC International Tsunami Information Center, collaborate to provide tsunami travel time maps. Tsunamis are categorized as long waves; therefore, tsunami travel times can be computed with water depth as the only
The NCEI Coastal Water Temperature Guide (CWTG) was decommissioned on May 5, 2025. The data are still available. Please see the Data Sources below.
On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake struck off the northeast coast of Honshu, Japan, generating a deadly tsunami.
The World Magnetic Model (WMM) is the standard model for navigation, attitude, and heading referencing systems that use the geomagnetic field. The WMM is also used for civilian applications, including navigation and heading systems. A new version of the model is updated every five years to address
The Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) system is a network of 160 high-resolution S-band Doppler weather radars jointly operated by the National Weather Service (NWS), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the U.S. Air Force. The NEXRAD system detects precipitation and wind, and its
The International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) project is the most complete global collection of tropical cyclones available. It merges recent and historical tropical cyclone data from multiple agencies to create a unified, publicly available, best-track dataset that improves
The ETOPO Global Relief Model integrates topography, bathymetry, and shoreline data from regional and global datasets to enable comprehensive, high resolution renderings of geophysical characteristics of the earth’s surface. The model is designed to support tsunami forecasting, modeling, and warning
The Global Historical Climatology Network daily (GHCNd) is an integrated database of daily climate summaries from land surface stations across the globe. GHCNd is made up of daily climate records from numerous sources that have been integrated and subjected to a common suite of quality assurance
The U.S. Climate Normals are a large suite of data products that provide information about typical climate conditions for thousands of locations across the United States. Normals act both as a ruler to compare today’s weather and tomorrow’s forecast, and as a predictor of conditions in the near
Learn about how and why the geomagnetic poles move, and access pole location data from 1590–2025.
The World Ocean Database (WOD) is world's largest collection of uniformly formatted, quality controlled, publicly available ocean profile data. It is a powerful tool for oceanographic, climatic, and environmental research, and the end result of more than 20 years of coordinated efforts to
Though climate and weather are closely related, they aren't the same thing. The main difference between the two is time.