Irish National Tide Gauge Network (INTGN): Buncrana Pier Tide Gauge, Co. Donegal, Ireland 2024 - Present

Buncrana Pier: 

A tide gauge was installed on Buncrana Pier in 2024, as part of the Irish National Tide Gauge Network. The Marine Institute carried out the installation and has managed and funded the gauge since then. Apart from wide applicability locally, a key driver for this site was a request from the RNLI, who required more precise tidal tables. The gauge also incorporates an operational weather station.  For detailed site-specific metadata and broader information about the tide gauge network, please see below.

Site-specific Metadata:
Installation date: 05/09/2024 
Latitude: 55.126372
Longitude: -7.464689
Mean Sea Level, MSL (relative to Ordnance Datum Malin Head, ODMH) = Unknown*
Lowest Astronomical Tide, LAT, relative to ODMH = Unknown*
Tide Gauge Benchmark, TGBM, relative to ODMH = 4.051 m
Tidal range, between low and high mean spring tides = Unknown*
Output parameters: 	
     –   Time, Latitude, Longitude, Station ID, Data source id
     –   Water level relative to ODMH (in metres)
     –   Water level relative to LAT (in metres)
     –   QC flag
Quality controlled data from: 24/09/2024
Automated Near-Real-Time Quality control and visual QC from: Pending
*Too early to calculate these from long-term records


               Irish National Tide Gauge Network (INTGN) Real Time Data: 

The INTGN is a network of tide gauges located around the Irish coast, collecting water level data to support the development of a permanent tidal monitoring infrastructure. The Marine Institute owns the network and is responsible for the service, maintenance, and quality control of all the network nodes. The Office of Public Works (OPW) and various local authorities contribute data from some additional gauges they have installed but these gauges are outside the control of network management, so are not included within the core MI dataset.

The home page for the network is www.irishtides.ie. It is accompanied by a core product, the on-line astronomical prediction system www.irishtides.ie/predict. 

Each tide gauge has a unique start date, deployment and service history. All the Marine Institute’s gauges are fully serviced, calibrated and operational. International best practice is observed in all operations and proactive maintenance activities.  Gauges will be down from time to time pending repair or reinstatement, as appropriate.

The following parameters are collected:
     –   Station
     –   DateTime
     –   Water Level (relative to Ordnance Datum Malin Head) *see caveats below
     –   Water Level (above Lowest Astronomical Tide [LAT]) *see caveats below

Data from each gauge is transmitted to the Marine Institute in real-time via mobile network connections, is quality controlled and made openly accessible. See below for more details.


               Quality Statement for TGN Data Processing: 

Since September 2024, Real-Time data, streamed into the Marine Institute’s database every five minutes, undergoes automated quality control (QC) following QARTOD QC guidelines (https://ioos.noaa.gov/project/qartod/). The automated checks include:
     –   Time format validation
     –   Gross range check
     –   Spike test
     –   Rate of change test
     –   Flatline test
     –   Attenuated signal test
     –   Comparison with model-predicted tidal heights

The core principle of real time transmission and display of raw data on www.irishtideres.ie is maintained, and data are never deleted. Instead, each measurement is accompanied by a quality flag indicating whether it is has “no QC”, “good” or “bad” status (0,1 & 4 respectively), based on the SeaDataNet quality flagging system. A user can choose to use or ignore these flags depending on their use case for the data.

Approximately every one to two weeks, the data collected by each tide gauge undergoes visual screening by the Marine Institute’s Ocean and Climate Services Section. This process verifies automated flags and identifies any issues missed by the automated QC. A final visual QC flag is then applied. Prior to September 2024, all data was subject to a manual QC routine, which is also represented in the visual-QC flag record.

Users should be aware that the automated QC may flag data that are reasonable in scenarios where there is significant deviation from the normal tidal cycle (e.g. storm surge events). For this reason, the visual QC flag should supersede the automated QC flag when present. 

As part of an annual calibration and maintenance campaign, all Marine Institute tide gauges are serviced and calibrated. Accurate calibration, including sensor level adjustments, drift calculation and tidal cycle precision, is essential for producing high-quality data. Integration of calibration results into the data processing workflow is ongoing. Until this is complete and corrections are applied, where needed, the Marine Institute cannot fully quantify margins of error and can therefore only partially endorse the final data outputs. Despite extensive calibration and QC efforts, unresolved offset issues should be considered a caveat for users requiring high-accuracy data over the full time-series. Another caveat is that from the reported parameter “Water Level (above Lowest Astronomical Tide [LAT])”, the LAT values are model derived, due to not having enough observations (> 19 years) to calculate LAT in most cases.

If users encounter specific issues affecting the intended use of these data, they may contact the Marine Institute for support. The Institute will review and address such cases individually, based on the nature of the concern.

Data access: 
Data is available via the Marine Institute’s ERDDAP download portal: https://erddap.marine.ie/erddap/tabledap/IrishNationalTideGaugeNetwork.html Below are some examples of how a user can customise a download from ERDDAP:
     –   Filter data by quality flag
     –   Select specific gauges
     –   Choose date ranges
     –   Specify file output formats

Real-time data is also accessible from an SFTP site associated with www.irishtides.ie. Please get in touch for information on accessing the SFTP site.

Tags: environment
Organization: Marine Institute