USING NOAA WEB SERVICES WITH WORLDTIDES©1

The National Ocean Service (NOS), a division of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), maintains more than 240 active water level stations in twenty-four U.S.
coastal, estuarine and ocean states, including Alaska and Hawaii, plus the District of Columbia
(Washington DC). Data from these stations are available at any time through the NOAA website
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/. Now the NOS Center for Operational Oceanographic Products
and Services (CO-OPS) has added web services which permit application-to-application water
level transfers. The following programs are among the WORLDTIDES applications written with
MATLAB® for MS Windows® that take full advantage of this service.

Program coopsR6m

Purpose: Downloads raw six-minute water levels from co-ops.nos.noaa.gov web services. These
data have NOT been verified; Users must assume full responsibility for subsequent applications.

Requirements: MATLAB version 7.1.0 for Windows or later version and a working directory
containing the m-file named ‘coopsR6m’ and the mat-file ‘USA_active’ listing active stations.
Microsoft Excel® is also required to receive the output data (files of type .xls).

Methods: Go to the working directory and enter the command ‘coopsR6m’. After the GUI page
appears, select a state and then a station from list boxes on the left side of the page. The NOAA
7-digit station number and 4-letter station code for the station selected will appear in blue (Note:
the station code is used only as a label identifying the Excel output file - the user can overwrite it
with another 4-letter code of his or her choice). Continue with the following selections:

1. Select the starting and ending year, month, day, hour and minute.
2. Select the units: feet or meters.
3. Select the datum: MSL, MLLW, or NAVD (note: NAVD is not available at all stations).
4. Select the time zone: LST or UTC (note: LST is recommended for local applications).
5. Uncheck ‘Save output file’ if you do NOT want the data saved to an Excel output file.
6. Press ‘Send Request’. If the data are not available or more than one month of 6-minute
data is requested, an error message will occur.

If the download is successful, a plot of the data will appear next. If the plot is not smooth (spikes
or gaps are present), an error index (second difference squared) will appear as a warning to the
user to check the error listing on sheet 3 of the Excel outfile. Web services ‘name’ information
(station name, code, units, datum and time zone) will appear on sheet 2. When exploring station
data for a certain event, uncheck the ‘Save output file’ box to avoid an excess of saved files.

Sheet 1 will contain the parsed 6-minute data in a format ready for use by the tidal analysis
program of WORLDTIDES. Before using this program, the water levels in column D of sheet 1
should be checked against the error listing in sheet 3 to determine whether a ‘spike’ value should
be deleted or not – program coopsR6m makes no deletions on its own. Brief gaps have little or
no effect on a WORLDTIDES analysis but a persistent series of spikes can easily affect the
series mean and tidal constituent values obtained.

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WORLDTIDES© is a copyrighted tide analysis program available at no cost at www.worldtidesandcurrents.com .
 Program coopsVhr

Purpose: Downloads verified hourly heights from co-ops.nos.noaa.gov web services.

Requirements: MATLAB version 7.1.0 for Windows or higher version with a working directory
containing the m-file named ‘coopsVhr’ and the mat-file ‘USA_active’. An Excel file
containing a station profile is optional as noted below.

Methods: Same as for program coopsR6m except that there are no minutes to select and error
checking is not used.

Station Profile: A special option for program coopsVhr allows certain station information, if
known, to be automatically inserted into the Excel outfile being downloaded. This information
permits a fully annotated graph of 30-day water levels to be created immediately when running
WORLDTIDES with files that have the pre-loaded information. The source of the information is
an Excel workbook file named ‘ABCD_profile’ where ‘ABCD’ is the 4-letter station code. Note
that this file is optional and coopsVhr will still create a standard Excel outfile if it is not present.

A valid station profile consists of the following items, each entered on a separate worksheet:

1. Tidal constituent pre-selection in a worksheet named ‘tidecn’. An example of a ‘tidecn’

worksheet appears in the workbook ‘SWPT_profile’ included with program coopsVhr.
The constituents selected (based on prior analysis with WORLDTIDES) are indicated by
a ‘1’ in the column to the right of the constituent symbol, rather than a ‘0’ indicating non-
selection. Pre-selection allows quicker least squares harmonic analysis of new data for a
station previously analyzed. For NOAA stations that have amplitude and phase for the
seasonal constituents Sa and Ssa (available at http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/), enter the
values in the two columns to the right of those symbols (WORLDTIDES cannot
determine seasonal constituents since very long data sets are required).

2. Tidal datum elevations and plotting limits in an Excel worksheet named ‘datums’. An
example of a completed ‘datums’ worksheet appears in the workbook ‘SWPT_profile’.
The elevations for the MHHW, MSL, and MLLW tidal datums can be obtained by
searching ‘tidal datums’ at http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/; NOAA usually provides
these elevations relative to the station datum (STND). WORLDTIDES computes the 19-
year extremes for Highest Astronomical Tide (HAT) and Lowest Astronomical tide
(LAT) relative to MSL after a satisfactory set of tidal constituents (including Sa and Ssa)
has been obtained for the station. Finally, it is necessary to express all of the elevations
relative to MLLW. The following table shows how this is done in stages left to right
using the NOAA station at Sewells Point (SWPT), VA as an example:

Datum Elev. HAT 2.18

» HAT 3.53 feet
MHHW 7.14 » MHHW 1.41 » MHHW 2.76 feet
MSL 5.73 » MSL 0.00 » MSL 1.35 feet
MLLW 4.38 » MLLW -1.35 » MLLW 0.00 feet
STND 0.00 LAT -2.04 » LAT -0.69 feet

Along with datum elevations, enter plot limits above HAT and below LAT values.

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 3. Station number, place name, station code and reference datum in an Excel worksheet
named ‘webinfo’. The place name is the name you would like to appear in the title of the
annotated WORLDTIDES analysis program plot. An example of a completed ‘webinfo’
worksheet appears in the workbook ‘SWPT_profile’.

WORLDTIDES Analysis Program – WEB Services Option

Purpose: Downloads raw six-minute water levels from co-ops.nos.noaa.gov web services and
adds these to an existing file as needed to complete the most recent 30-day water level history.

Requirements: MATLAB version 7.1.0 for Windows or higher version with a working directory
containing the WORLDTIDES program, version 2007 or later. An existing Excel file (e.g.,
SWPT2007) containing completed ‘tidecn’, ‘datums’, and ‘webinfo’ worksheets is also required.

Methods: Enter the command ‘worldtides’ and select ‘Tide Analysis’. Choose feet or meters,
check the ‘WEB services’ box and then double click the existing Excel .xls file containing the
required worksheets (NOTE: the six-minute water level data must appear in the first worksheet
of the Excel workbook regardless of the name). After reading the available six-minute data in the
file selected, WORLDTIDES will contact NOAA web services and automatically obtain the
remaining data needed to complete the most recent 30-day water level history. Six-minute water
levels are updated at NOAA active stations approximately every fifteen minutes.

Value Added: Each MATLAB figure containing a fully annotated graph with tidal datums must
be maximized to view all of the information displayed. The value added by WORLDTIDES and
the web services option in this case is not tidal prediction but storm surge and storm tide analysis
and evaluation. The example below illustrates the storm surge (green curve) and storm tide (red
curve) for the ‘Thanksgiving Northeaster’ that struck the Hampton Roads area in 2006. A new
storm tide measure termed Extratidal High Water (XHW) refers the extreme to the tidal datum
that matters most during coastal flooding: Highest Astronomical tide (HAT). Trouble begins
when local water levels go ‘extratidal’ (see Recent Events, www.worldtidesandcurrents.com).