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International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) (Submitted by Ken Knapp, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center)
Action proposed The Meeting is invited to note the information in this document with a view toward: Providing any advice and recommendations for improvements and/or enhancements to IBTrACS. Endorsing the IBTrACS dataset as a viable, active, and unifying global archive to aid the work of the TC RSMCs and TCWCs. Formally adopting IBTrACS by the WMO TC Programme for use as the recognized global best tracks archive for TCs. Working towards developing standard operational procedures across the TC RSMCs and TCWCs to aid in standardizing the data archived in IBTrACS. Inviting IBTrACS to provide updates to the TC Programme as appropriate. A. Background and Overview Studies of tropical cyclone frequency and distribution have garnered much attention recently. Despite the numerous articles in peer-reviewed literature discussing global statistics of tropical cyclones (e.g., power dissipation index or frequency of extreme cyclones), until recently there was no such central repository of global tropical cyclone data. Many researchers have simply used data from the fewest sources to obtain global coverage: HURDAT1 and data from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. Aside from the many issues in merging data from just these two centers, doing so also excludes data from many of the WMO-recognized Regional Specialized Meteorological Centres (RSMC), who officially forecast and monitor tropical cyclones in their region of responsibility. Furthermore, there are similar best track data sets from other institutions in countries with interests in certain basins. In short, the two primary issues which hinder scientists from using all available global tropical cyclone data are: 1) availability and 2) the process in combining disparate data sets. The purpose of the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) project (Knapp et al., 2010) is to overcome these issues thereby facilitating scientific research to1 improve the public understanding of global tropical cyclones. First, we work with all available RSMCs and other centres of data to obtain the global best tracks. Second, we process all best track data by combining storm information tracked by multiple centres (Kruk et al. 2009) and reporting the data using common formats. The overarching vision is to provide an openly accessible and comprehensive global tropical cyclone best track data set to facilitate research. Likewise, the methods used to produce the data are openly described and flexible to accommodate user feedback.
on May 5-7, 2009 in Asheville, NC (Levinson and Diamond 2009). The purpose of the workshop was to gather international experts in global tropical cyclone best track data to discuss a variety of topics that would serve to enhance the existing IBTrACS global tropical cyclone dataset. The format of the workshop was one to three presentations on a specific topic relevant to best track dataset development followed by moderated discussion amongst the participants in break-out groups over the course of two and a half days. In addition to invited presentations, abstracts for a poster session were also accepted, and the session featured relevant topics to global best track data improvements and enhancements. In summary, this was the first time that the IBTrACS Project team at NCDC had an opportunity to interact with the various experts and the official tropical cyclone monitoring and forecast centers from around the world, and as such the prime outcome was the establishment of a core group of contributors and users to aid in furthering the development and future releases of the IBTrACS dataset. Attendees spanned the globe from places such as Australia, Fiji, Guam, India, New Zealand; as well as from across the U.S.
Meteorology Division, NCAR, Boulder, CO. “I thought that the workshop went great - lots of excellent discussion and some fairly concrete ideas of how to proceed.” – Dr. Chris Landsea, Science and Operations Officer, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center. D. Summary The IBTrACS dataset is the result of a globally coordinated and collaborative project, and provides the first publicly available centralized repository of global TC best track data from the RSMCs and other agencies. In combining the disparate datasets, IBTrACS uses objective techniques that necessarily account for the inherent differences between international agencies. Unlike any other global tropical cyclone best track dataset, IBTrACS provides a measure of the inter-agency variability, which helps to identify uncertainty in the TC record. While IBTrACS is not a reanalysis (e.g., Fernandez-Partagas and Diaz,1996; Harper et al., 2008b; Landsea et al., 2004), the derived uncertainty metrics can serve as a stepping stone in identifying those tropical cyclones which are in most need of reanalysis. As IBTrACS data stand, numerous inhomogeneities exist in the intensity record due to interagency differences in available technologies, observations and procedures over time. For example, inhomogeneities were introduced when various satellite data became available at an agency or when forecasters were trained in different analysis techniques. As discussed in Levinson et al. (2009), efforts are underway at NCDC to document the operating procedures at the various RSMC and forecast offices, with an emphasis on changes in processes or capabilities that affect dataset homogeneity. Finally, IBTrACS is expandable to allow for inclusion of other best track datasets as they become available. This allows input from individuals and/or agencies that have yet to develop new or release existing best track data . It is clear that the IBTrACS dataset would be even more useful by including other information on global tropical cyclones. For example, non-developing storm tracks could be included for the tropical cyclone forecasting community in a future version. Such data are needed to verify statistical tropical cyclone intensity prediction models (e.g., DeMaria and Kaplan, 1999). Furthermore, some agencies provide non 6-hr analyses and other storm parameters (such as radius of maximum winds, storm size, eye diameter, and radius of the outer-most closed isobar), which could be incorporated into IBTrACS making it more useful to storm surge and wave modelers, emergency managers and reinsurance groups.
Scheme (SHIPS) for the Atlantic and Eastern North Pacific Basins. Weather and Forecasting, 14, 326-337. Fernandez-Partagas, J. and H. F. Diaz, 1996: Atlantic Hurricanes in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 77, 2899-2906. Harper, B. A., S. A. Stroud, M. McCormack, and S. West, 2008b: A review of historical tropical cyclone intensity in north-western Australia and implications for climate change trend analysis. Australian Meteorological Magazine, 57, 121-141.
International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS): Centralizing tropical cyclone best track data. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, In press.
cyclone best track data. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology (in press). http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-pdf&doi=10.1175%2F2009JTECHA1267.1
Hungerford, C. Neumann, and M. Zimmer, 2004: The Atlantic hurricane database reanalysis project: Documentation for the 1851-1910 alterations and additions to the HURDAT database. Hurricanes and Typhoons: Past, Present and Future, R. J. Murnane and K.-B. Liu, Eds., Columbia University Press, 177-221.
homogenous global tropical cyclone best track dataset. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Submitted. 1 Hurricane Database (HURDAT) data is produced by NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) Directory: pages -> prog -> www -> tcp -> documents documents -> Review of the ra IV hurricane operational plan documents -> Cyclone programme documents -> World meteorological organization technical document documents -> World meteorological organization ra IV hurricane committee thirty-fourth session documents -> World meteorological organization ra IV hurricane committee thirty-third session documents -> Review of the past hurricane season documents -> Ra IV hurricane committee thirty-fourth session ponte vedra beach, fl, usa documents -> World meteorological organization ra IV hurricane committee thirty-second session documents -> World meteorological organization ra IV hurricane committee thirty-fifth session documents -> English only review of the tropical cyclone operational plan for the south pacific and south-east indian ocean Download 55.07 Kb. Share with your friends:
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