---
language:
- en
---
# CoastalBench-preview

 \[[**Paper**](https://openreview.net/pdf?id=h3EEUJaMLu)\]  \[[**GitHub**](https://github.com/spatialdatasciencegroup/CoastalBench)\]

> This repository contains a 90-day subset of the full **CoastalBench** dataset, provided as a lightweight preview.


## Dataset Overview

- **Time span**: 2008-01-02 to 2008-04-01 
- **Duration**: 90 days  
- **Temporal resolution**: Half-hourly (48 time steps per day)  
- **Spatial resolution**: 898 × 598  
- **Vertical levels**: 12 (for 3D ocean features)  
- **Data type**: `float16` (This preview uses lower precision compared to the original NetCDF files for reduced storage)


## Variables

### Ocean and Meteorological Features
Each `.zarr` file contains 48 half-hourly time steps across 82 features, stacked along the first dimension.

The 82 features include:
- **3D variables** (each with 12 vertical levels, treated as 12 separate 2D channels):
  - `u`: horizontal velocity (east-west)
  - `v`: horizontal velocity (north-south)
  - `w`: vertical velocity
  - `temp` : temperature
  - `salt` : salinity
  - `AKs` : vertical mixing coefficient
- **2D surface variables**:
  - `zeta`: sea surface height
  - `Pair`: surface air pressure
  - `Qair`: specific humidity
  - `Tair`: air temperature
  - `rain`: rainfall rate
  - `swrad`: shortwave radiation
  - `lwrad`: longwave radiation
  - `Uwind`: u-wind component
  - `Vwind`: v-wind component
- **Land-sea mask**:
  - `mask`: binary mask (1 for ocean, 0 for land), included as the 82nd feature

All features are stacked into a single 4D tensor:  `(features=82, height=898, width=598, time=48)`

### River Inputs 
Each river Zarr file contains 48 half-hourly time steps of 25 features across 4 river locations. These features include:

- `river_transport`: river transport (1D)
- `river_temp`: temperature at 12 depth levels
- `river_salt`: salinity at 12 depth levels

All features are stored in a 3D array with shape `(features=25, rivers=4, time=48)` and are temporally aligned with the ocean and meteorological data.

## File Structure

```
CoastalBench-preview/
├── ocean_met/
│   ├── 20080102.zarr/
│   ├── 20080103.zarr/
│   ├── ...
│   └── 20080401.zarr/
│
├── river/
│   ├── 20080102.zarr/
│   ├── 20080103.zarr/
│   ├── ...
│   └── 20080401.zarr/
```




## Citation
Please cite our paper if you find this dataset useful for your work:
```
@inproceedings{coastalbench,
  title={CoastalBench: A Decade-Long High-Resolution Dataset to Emulate Complex Coastal Processes},
  author={Xu, Zelin and Zhang, Yupu and Xiao, Tingsong and Lizaso, Maitane Olabarrieta and Gonzalez-Ondina, Jose M and Liu, Zibo and Chen, Shigang and Jiang, Zhe},
  booktitle={Forty-second International Conference on Machine Learning},
  year={2025},
}
```