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Data Access

Tidal Hindcast

The tidal hindcast data is available through three interfaces depending on your workflow.

Marine Energy Atlas

The Marine Energy Atlas provides a point-and-click interface for exploring time- and depth-averaged current speed and power density across all five hindcast domains. Use it for initial site screening before downloading time series data.

Python / CLI Quick Start

The us-marine-energy-resource Python library (which includes the us-tidal CLI) can query tidal hindcast data by point, transect, or area, with built-in tools to visualize and analyze the results.

import us_marine_energy_resource.tidal_hindcast as tidal

# Fetch the full hindcast time series for the nearest grid point.
# Data is downloaded from S3 and cached locally on first call.
df = tidal.get_data_at_point(lat=60.73, lon=-151.43)

# Plot velocity exceedance curves across all depth layers.
fig, stats = tidal.plot_velocity_exceedance(df)

# Plot the joint probability distribution at a single depth layer.
fig = tidal.generate_tidal_joint_probability(df, sigma_layer=4)

Bulk Access (HSDS and AWS S3)

For bulk downloads or programmatic access to the raw parquet files, the data is available via HSDS and AWS S3.

Wave Hindcast

Wave hindcast data is available via HSDS and AWS S3 using the rex library.

Quick Start With rex

from rex import ResourceX

wave_file = '/nrel/US_wave/West_Coast/West_Coast_wave_2010.h5'
lat_lon = (34.399408, -119.841181)

with ResourceX(wave_file, hsds=True) as f:
    lat_lon_swh = f.get_lat_lon_df('significant_wave_height', lat_lon)

HSDS Paths

The HSDS endpoint is https://developer.nlr.gov/api/hsds.

Region HSDS Path Pattern Years
West Coast /nrel/US_wave/West_Coast/West_Coast_wave_{year}.h5 1979–2020
Atlantic /nrel/US_wave/Atlantic/Atlantic_wave_{year}.h5 1979–2020
Alaska /nrel/US_wave/Alaska/Alaska_wave_{year}.h5 1979–2020
Hawaii /nrel/US_wave/Hawaii/Hawaii_wave_{year}.h5 1979–2020

AWS S3 Paths

The S3 bucket is s3://wpto-pds-us-wave (public, no credentials required).

Region Latest Version S3 Path
West Coast v1.0.1 s3://wpto-pds-us-wave/v1.0.1/West_Coast/
Atlantic v1.0.1 s3://wpto-pds-us-wave/v1.0.1/Atlantic/
Hawaii v1.0.0 s3://wpto-pds-us-wave/v1.0.0/Hawaii/
Alaska v1.0.1 s3://wpto-pds-us-wave/v1.0.1/Alaska/
CNMI and Guam v1.0.0 s3://wpto-pds-us-wave/v1.0.0/CNMI_and_Guam/
Gulf of Mexico and Puerto Rico v1.0.1 s3://wpto-pds-us-wave/v1.0.1/Gulf_of_Mexico_and_Puerto_Rico/