Accessing unaggregated COOPS OFS output

[AmyMacFadyen]

CO-OPS maintains 7-day aggregations for their OFS that are based on ROMS. All FVCOM/SELFE model output is unaggregated (SFBOFS, CREOFS, NGOFS2, LEOFS, LMHOFS...)

Main THREDDS server: https://opendap.co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/thredds/catalog.html
Older (>1 month) archive: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/thredds/model/model.html

Additionally for time series prior to the 7-day aggregations there is a need to do manual aggregation.

Building an aggregation requires understanding their naming conventions:

2-D surface field output: nos.wcofs.2ds.[n|f]HHH.YYYYMMDD.tCCz.nc
3-D field output: nos.wcofs.fields.[n|f]NNN.YYYYMMDD.tCCz.nc

Where [nowcast/forecast] or [n/f] denotes either the nowcast or forecast results; YYYYMMDD is the date of the model run, tCCz is the cycle of the day; HHH is the nowcast or forecast hour.

[AmyMacFadyen]

Notes on COOPS aggregations:
Nowcast and forecast files are created four times a day. Output is hourly in
individual files. So each update generates 6 nowcast files and 48 forecast files
The update cycle time will be the last model output timestep in the nowcast
files and the first timestep in the forecast files

Example filenames from one update cycle (20141027.t15z):
Nowcast:
nos.ngofs.fields.n000.20141027.t15z.nc
nos.ngofs.fields.n001.20141027.t15z.nc
...
nos.ngofs.fields.n006.20141027.t15z.nc

Forecast:
nos.ngofs.fields.f000.20141027.t15z.nc
nos.ngofs.fields.f002.20141027.t15z.nc
...
nos.ngofs.fields.f048.20141027.t15z.nc

So to make a time series, use subsequent nowcasts updates strung together sequentially
by update date/time then by n0001-n005 (leave off the last one as it overlaps with
the next set of files)

Similarly append the forecast that is the same update cycle as the most recent nowcast.

[kthyng]

This is super useful @AmyMacFadyen, thanks! I am putting together some code to make these aggregations.

[kthyng]

@AmyMacFadyen Do you want to be able to use both 2-D surface field output and 3D or do you just use one of these?

[AmyMacFadyen]

Both! It should be an option when making the data request (e.g. surface only or full 3d)