The Integrated Ocean Observing System Model Viewer: A Resource for Integrated Model Output

The Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) Model Viewer and the Environmental Data Server (EDS) that manages the data feeding the Viewer provides users with a single access point to integrated model output from varied federal and nonfederal sources. RPS Ocean Science, an IOOS private industry partner, developed the EDS to provide the US Coast Guard homogenized access to oceanographic and meteorological data to support operations (search and rescue, disaster response, etc). The data are collected in disparate formats, converted to a single common format (netCDF), and are made available via standard web services. IOOS leveraged this development and implemented a web-based user interface, a modified version of the RPS OceansMap product, which is the current IOOS Model Viewer. The Viewer allows users to visualize a subset of the output data harvested by the EDS via Web Map Service (WMS), and also provides users direct access to the netCDF files via an OPeNDAP service provided by the EDS THREDDS server.

The IOOS Model Viewer is a tool that allows users to examine model output in a map-based environment, and perform model-observation comparisons. Model sources include the IOOS Regional Associations (RA), their partners, and federal groups within NOAA and the Navy. Some observations are included for comparison purposes from NOAA (water level stations and weather buoys), USACE (wave buoys), and IOOS (HF Radar surface currents plus some RA stations). Overall, this is an agile way for users to access model output without being constrained by geographic domains, and offers a flexible and responsive platform to assess data quality, and examine forecast information for multiple oceanographic variables from multiple sources at once. The tool has the potential to aid in decision support and is currently used within NOAA as a resource for model quality assessments.

See https://eds.ioos.us.