New flood dataset helps communities plan for the future

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The trouble is that in some areas of the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf coasts, those gauges can be hundreds of miles apart. That's because the gauges are mainly located near population centers like cities and ports. In the past, if you were a town official making flood management plans for a community between the gauges, planning would be a challenge.

Not anymore.

The National Ocean Service (NOS), which is part of NOAA, has launched Coastal Ocean Reanalysis (CORA), the first comprehensive dataset that includes more than four decades of modeled historical water level and wave information covering roughly every quarter mile along the U.S. coastline.

CORA helps create a more complete, consistent picture of historical water levels by modeling waves and water levels between NOAA tide gauges. CORA pairs historical observations from NOAA tide gauges with modern computer models to fill in the gaps.

"Historical coastal water level information is necessary to assess changing flood risks to communities and to predict the likelihood of flooding," NOS Director Nicole LeBoeuf said in a release. "This new dataset will improve NOAA's current flood-risk assessment tools and help scientists develop new coastal flood products and services for the nation."

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