65th IHC Booklet/Program (pdf - 4.9MB) - Office of the Federal ...

What might a global TC reanalysis project look like?
Paula Ann Hennon 1 , Ken Knapp 2
(paula.hennon@noaa.gov)
1 STG, Inc.; 2 NOAA/NCDC/RSAD
Tropical cyclone intensity, distribution and frequency significantly impact life and property.
Understanding these aspects of cyclones, however, requires a uniformly constructed dataset. The
International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship project has provided a centralized
collection of TC best track data. Despite efforts to minimize discontinuities in IBTrACS,
inhomogeneities remain caused by changes in instrumentation, personnel, forecast agencies and
operational procedures, which has led to a catalog of storms that is incongruous. To ameliorate
this issue, efforts are underway in the North Atlantic to perform a reanalysis of storm intensity,
however no global effort is currently in progress.
We plan to build upon work already in progress by NHC and HRD in conjunction with the
National Climatic Data Center to facilitate the development of and to archive a record of reanalyzed
global TC intensity. NCDC is uniquely positioned to facilitate this project given the
datasets and expertise on hand. IBTrACS is a global inventory of known tropical cyclones, while
the HURSAT dataset is a collection of all satellite brightness temperatures from polar and
geostationary satellites for the storms in IBTrACS. Using these NCDC resources, the Dvorak
technique can be applied to estimate TC intensity during the satellite era.
NCDC’s extensive archive of in-situ data already in the process of being modernized by the
Climate Data Modernization Program as well as data in the paper archives at yet to be discovered
can be made available to the global tropical cyclone research community, but necessitates a
coordinated multi-agency effort.
What should we DO
with this data?
Poster Session – Page 35