Significant observation
Hurricanes
None — no tropical cyclones are being tracked right now.
A hurricane’s intensity depends on the ocean beneath it — on how much warm water the storm can draw from before its own mixing brings cooler water to the surface. That subsurface structure is what forecast models most need and least often have, and it is measured in the one place ships cannot safely work. Uncrewed platforms fill the gap: gliders profile temperature and salinity through the upper ocean and surface to report, while uncrewed surface vehicles ride out the storm at the air–sea interface, measuring winds, waves and fluxes. C4PO has flown gliders for hurricane monitoring in the Mid-Atlantic through MARACOOS and NOAA-supported deployments, and works on the next generation of uncrewed surface vehicles and their launch and recovery systems.
Data sources
Public feeds, refetched hourly and shown only where a platform has reported recently. The depth contours are the exception: computed once, since the seafloor does not change. Gridded fields carry the model run they came from. Colour scale, range and contour opacity are yours to set.
Platforms
- NOAA National Hurricane Center — storm positions, forecast tracks and cones, and the observed track over the past ten days
- US IOOS Glider DAC — glider positions, United States
- NOC / BODC — glider positions, United Kingdom
- Ocean Tracking Network — glider positions, Canada
- Voice of the Ocean — glider positions, Sweden
- NOAA PMEL — uncrewed surface vehicle positions
- Ifremer Argo GDAC — Argo float positions and last profile time, over a twelve-day window
Ocean fields
- US Navy ESPC-D-V02 — 1/12° global forecast, via HYCOM’s OPeNDAP: currents at the surface and at 60 m, sea-surface temperature, and salinity
- NOAA PSL OISST v2.1 — observed sea-surface temperature, 1/4° daily
- ECMWF IFS — 10 m wind, 1/4° open forecast data, licensed CC BY 4.0
Seafloor and shoreline
- GEBCO 2026 — depth contours from 20 m to 10,000 m, from the 15 arc-second grid
- EMODnet Bathymetry — shoreline
- NOAA NCEI DEM global mosaic — seafloor depth at a point, on click
Boundaries
- Marine Regions (VLIZ) — Exclusive Economic Zone boundaries, and which country’s zone a point falls in
Basemaps
- GEBCO — global bathymetry, the default
- Esri Ocean — alternative bathymetry
- OpenStreetMap — alternative reference map
- Natural Earth — country and state borders, and the offline coastline basemap
Glider endpoints follow the OceanGliders regional list. Coriolis is not included — its glider archive is delayed mode, weeks behind — nor is Australia’s IMOS, which has no open endpoint.