Announcing GROW-FINE NEPAC (GF-NEPAC) our latest publically available hindcast for the Pacific coastlines of North and Central America, encompassing Alaska’s Aleutian Islands in the North to the middle of Ecuador’s mainland coastline in the South. This hindcast was designed to be an improvement over other available coastal Pacific wind and wave datasets including ERA5 and our earlier NEPAC products.

These hindcast data consist of continuous hourly time steps of wind and wave parameters from 1979 through 2021, with 2022 to be added soon. Full 2D frequency-directional wave spectra are also available at a subset of the 0.1° (6-minute) resolution coastal grid, while bulk wind and wave parameters have been archived at each grid point. This archive grid extends from the coastline out into deep water incorporating (at least) the offshore 1000 m depth contour. These data are suitable for a variety of uses in the metocean and offshore design fields, and are available for purchase by point or as a whole and in a variety of formats including statistical analyses.

The hindcast’s wave modeling was performed using a series of 2-way nested grids over the Eastern Pacific basin using the Wavewatch3 model, and applies a reanalysis of the ocean wind fields specifically developed for this hindcast using a combination of statistically developed adjustments to ERA5’s 10 m neutral winds, and expert kinematic analysis of 309 storm events using our IOKA methodology. Outer wave nests were designed to capture far offshore swell generating storms and locate sufficient fidelity to resolve tight wind maxes of every tropical system within in the Eastern Pacific basin, while integrating data-assimilated 2D wave spectra boundary from ERA5.

Extensive skill assessment using available in-situ measurements and data from satellite based altimeter, radiometer, and scatterometer instruments is currently underway and will be included in the full project description, along with verification data sources, modeling inputs and methodology. To learn more about the new GF-NEPAC hindcast, please contact Erin Harris by email erinh@oceanweather.com, or phone with +1-203-661-3091.