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    • Hawaii and Pacific Islands King Tides Project

    Metadata Updated: January 26, 2025

    The University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program's Hawaii and Pacific Islands King Tides Project documents high water level events known as King Tides to better understand future impacts from sea level rise and other coastal hazards. King Tides provide a window into the future because today's high tides are predicted to become tomorrow's average sea levels. Citizen scientists have contributed to this free, publicly-accessible, and crowd-sourced dataset by photographing King Tides at places important to them throughout Hawaii and Oceania. Photos, observations, date, time, location, and other metadata are submitted online. This publicly-accessible online database informs research, policy, and decision making across the State of Hawaii and the wider Pacific region.

    King tides are the highest astronomical tides of the year. The scientific term for a King Tide is a perigean spring tide. King Tides in the Hawaiian Islands tend to occur during the summer (e.g., July and August) and winter months (e.g., December and January) in conjunction with new moons and full moons. King Tides, or the highest high tides of the year, are a unique coastal hazard. The timing of these extreme water level events can be anticipated through the use of tidal predictions, yet their impacts (e.g., coastal flooding and inundation in low-lying areas) can have devastating consequences for coastal inhabitants, particularly when combined with severe weather or high wave events. It is a common misconception that King Tides are the result of man-made climate change. When in reality, they are not byproducts of climate change, rather they are windows for us to see what the future of sea level rise from global climate change might look like along our coastlines. With future sea level rise we can expect more frequent high tide flooding and monthly and even daily high tides exceeding coastal inundation thresholds.

    When sharing these photographs, please cite this project with the following attribution:

    (c) Hawaii Sea Grant King Tides Project, (year of photo). Some rights reserved. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

    Access & Use Information

    License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

    Downloads & Resources

    Dates

    Metadata Date November 14, 2024
    Metadata Created Date November 12, 2020
    Metadata Updated Date January 26, 2025
    Reference Date(s) December 14, 2018 (creation), December 14, 2018 (issued), December 14, 2018 (revision)
    Frequency Of Update

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from ioos

    Other Data Resources

    Graphic Preview

    Sample image.

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Date November 14, 2024
    Metadata Created Date November 12, 2020
    Metadata Updated Date January 26, 2025
    Reference Date(s) December 14, 2018 (creation), December 14, 2018 (issued), December 14, 2018 (revision)
    Responsible Party Hawaii Sea Grant King Tides Project (Point of Contact)
    Contact Email
    Guid pac_uhsg_usa_kingtides_photos
    Access Constraints
    Bbox East Long 171.3731519
    Bbox North Lat 28.218039
    Bbox South Lat -14.32367
    Bbox West Long -177.378088
    Coupled Resource [{"title": [], "href": ["#DataIdentification"], "uuid": []}, {"title": [], "href": ["#DataIdentification"], "uuid": []}]
    Frequency Of Update
    Graphic Preview Description Sample image.
    Graphic Preview File http://pacioos.org/metadata/browse/pac_uhsg_usa_kingtides_photos.png
    Harvest Object Id b2234106-7b77-4c5d-bffe-9d86b7c2deff
    Harvest Source Id 54e15a6e-6dde-4c9c-a8f0-345cc0dfccfb
    Harvest Source Title ioos
    Licence
    Lineage 2018-12-14T00:00:00Z OGC web services (WMS and WFS) enabled by PacIOOS via GeoServer. Original data from source provider may have been reformatted, reprojected, or adjusted in other ways to optimize these capabilities.
    Metadata Language eng
    Metadata Type geospatial
    Old Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": [[[-177.378088, -14.32367], [171.3731519, -14.32367], [171.3731519, 28.218039], [-177.378088, 28.218039], [-177.378088, -14.32367]]]}
    Progress
    Spatial Data Service Type Open Geospatial Consortium Web Feature Service (WFS)
    Spatial Reference System
    Spatial Harvester True

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