Building Data Access for Sharing non-NWLON Water Level Information in Alaska

Accurate water level is fundamental for storm-surge forecasting, informed emergency response, ecosystem management, safe navigation, and charting. Portions of Alaska’s remote coastline are among the nation's most vulnerable to geohazards such as coastal sea level rise, tsunami, extra-tropical storm surge, and erosion. Yet active water level observations in Alaska are severely lacking and limiting our state’s ability to provide useful marine forecasts, endangering coastal populations and infrastructure. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services’ (CO-OPS) National Water Level Observation Network (NWLON) in Alaska presently consists of 26 active sensors, primarily located in the Gulf of Alaska. Approved NWLON technologies consist of in-water sensors in stilling wells, or down-looking microwave systems, making NWLON siting heavily reliant on built infrastructure and ice-free conditions. This makes annual operations and maintenance of a more widespread series of NWLONs cost prohibitive for most of the remote, low infrastructure coastline in Alaska. Though NWLON installations are always desirable as they provide the best solution for all water level data applications, a tiered water level data policy within NOAA allows for observations with lesser accuracies for less demanding applications. The Alaska Water Level Watch (AWLW) is a group working to augment the existing Alaska NWLON with tiered coastal water level observations and data products. This information will be made public through a robust data management system that parallels the NOAA CO-OPS Tides and Currents online system while offering new tools for analyzing data currently not served by CO-OPS. As this integrated water level observation strategy moves forward, this parallel system will be critical to ensuring that these complementary products are well understood and readily accessible by all users. The end product will be scalable to a national level, and exportable to other regions that can benefit from tiered water level observations. In this presentation, we demonstrate products from the prototype tiered water level data portal and discuss functionality.