Extreme Water Levels from CO-OPS

Description

Extremely high or low water levels at coastal locations are an important public concern and a factor in coastal hazard assessment, navigational safety, and ecosystem management. The probability that water levels will exceed a given elevation is based on a statistical analysis of historical extremely high and low water levels. This product provides annual exceedance probability levels for select Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS) water level stations with at least 30 years of data. When used in conjunction with real-time station data, exceedance probability levels can be used to evaluate current conditions and determine whether a rare event is occurring. This information may also be instrumental in planning for the possibility of dangerously high or low water events at a local level.

The extreme levels measured by the CO-OPS tide gauges during storms are called storm tides, which are the total observed seawater level during a storm, resulting from the combination of storm surge and the astronomical tide. They do not include wave runup, the movement of water up a slope. Therefore, the 1% annual exceedance probability levels do not necessarily correspond to the Base Flood Elevations (BFE) defined by the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), which are the basis for the National Flood Insurance Program. The 1% annual exceedance probability levels more closely correspond to FEMA's Still Water Flood Elevations (SWEL). The peak levels from tsunamis, which can cause high-frequency fluctuations at some locations, have not been included in this statistical analysis due to their infrequency during the periods of historic record.

Resources

Name Format Description Link
https://api.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/dpapi/prod/ Unknown CO-OPS Derived Products API Open resource
Home page for NOAA Tides and Currents Unknown CO-OPS main page Open resource
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/est/ Unknown CO-OPS Extreme Water Levels page Open resource
Extreme Water Levels of the United States 1893-2010 PDF 2013 Technical Report on Extreme Water Levels Open resource
CO-OPS Sea Level and Coastal Flooding Information HTML CO-OPS Sea Level and Coastal Flooding Information landing page Open resource
Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Keywords Unknown The information provided on this page seeks to define how the GCMD Keywords are structured, used and accessed. It also provides information on how users can participate in the further development of the keywords. Open resource
Full Metadata Record Unknown View the complete metadata record on InPort for more information about this dataset. Open resource
NOAA Data Management Plan (DMP) PDF NOAA Data Management Plan for this record on InPort. Open resource

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