The DLC generator has two primary sources of data:

  1. Measured data - sensor readings from buoys and stations throughout the ocean.
  2. Modeled data - data modeled using hindcast techniques

Backend data collection leverages MHKiT Wave IO Module for gathering measured data sources.

Measured Data Sources

CDIP Buoys

Data courtesy of CDIP. (Costal Data Information Program)

CDIP offers data from a pubic THREDDS server for their historic buoy data sets.

The DLC Generator tool automates the process of:

  1. Interacting with the THREDDS server and gathering all years of available data for a given buoy.
  2. Takes the wave spectral density data (\(m^2/H_z\)) from the buoy and uses MHKiT Wave Resource Module to calculate spectral parameters \(H_{m0}\), \(T_p\), and \(T_e\).
  3. Removing duplicate timestamps, and invalid/ non-numeric values.

NDBC Stations

NDBC (NOAA National Data Buoy Center) provides many different historical data sets. See their index for more information.

The DLC generator currently utilizes the stdmet and swden data sets that are available from the index.

  • stdmet - Standard Meteorological Current Year Historical Data
  • swden - Raw Spectral Wave Current Year Historical Data

The stdmet data provides \(H_{m0}\), \(T_p\) directly, and the same basic quality assurance is performed as CDIP (Step 3 above). These data sources don’t have \(T_e\) available.

The swden parameter data undergoes the same process as CDIP (all steps above).

Duplicated Buoys

Due to the two parameters available from NDBC, there may be a few stations that appear to be duplicated. The names may be the same, however one is from stdmet and one is from swden. Using the Has Te filter in the mapping page would remove the stdmet option.

Known Corrupt Values

NDBC has known corrupt values which are removed before presenting the data in the DLC tool:

  • stdmet - 999.0
  • swden - 99.0

Modeled Data Sources

DOE WPTO Hindcast

DOE’s Water Power Technology Office’s (WPTO) US Wave Dataset.

The modeled data is hosted publicly by DOE and WPTO.

The data is currently a 32-year data set (1979-2010) with plans to expand the date range in the future.

The tool refers to these data sets as:

  1. Hindcast Virtual Buoys
  2. Hindcast Grid Points

More general information available here.

Virtual Buoys

1-hour temporal resolution where the hindcast was performed at select locations of interest.

Virtual buoys are only available in the following regions:

  1. Atlantic (US East Coast)
  2. West Coast

Grid Points

3-hour temporal resolution grid of points down to 200m spatial resolution. Typically the resolution becomes more fine-grained and dense as approaching the coast lines.

Grid points are available in all regions:

  1. Atlantic (US East Coast)
  2. West Coast
  3. Hawaii
  4. Alaska

Only the 4 closest grid points are shown when selecting your site location.

References for DOE WPTO Data

  1. Atlantic (East Coast)
  2. West Coast
  3. Alaska
  4. Hawaii

Updated: