Exciting news!!!!!

A beach survey program commenced in April 1976 by Professor Andy Short at Narrabeen Beach located on Sydney’s Northern Beaches in southeast Australia, is one of a limited number of sites worldwide where on-going and uninterrupted beach monitoring now spans multiple decades.

To mark the 40-year anniversary of the Narrabeen monthly survey program, free and unrestricted access to the full survey dataset is now available.  It is anticipated that the public release of these data may assist coastal morphodynamic modellers to develop, test and advance the next generation of beach erosion-recovery hindcasting and forecasting tools. It is also hoped that the public release of these data can provide a useful educational resource for teachers and students.

The complete dataset comprises:
Monthly subaerial beach profiles 1976 – present (ongoing)
Multiple bathymetries at each survey transect extending seawards to 20m water depth
Hourly time-series of ocean astronomical tide
Hourly time-series of inshore wave forcing (Hs, Tp) at 10m water depths, corresponding to the locations of each of the individual survey transects.
The complete beach profile dataset that continues to be updated each month can now be viewed, explored and downloaded at the following web site:  http://narrabeen.wrl.unsw.edu.au/

A peer-reviewed Data Descriptor paper detailing the data collection methods, data validation, accompanying metadata, limitations and data file formats has been published to coincide with the launch of the above web site:

Turner, IL,  Harley, MD, Short, AD, Simmons, JA, Bracs, MA, Philiips, MS, Splinter, KD, 2016.  A multi-decade dataset of monthly beach profile surveys and inshore wave forcing at Narrabeen, Australia. Scientific Data, 3:160024, doi: 10.1038/sdata.2016.24.

This publication is open access, and can be obtained at:  http://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201624