International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship

International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship
Name	International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship
Acronyms	IBTrACS
Established	2010
Developers	National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Centers for Environmental Information, World Meteorological Organization, University of Miami
Country	International

Contents

International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship is a consolidated global dataset compiling historical tropical cyclone track and intensity information from multiple regional and national agencies. It provides standardized records used by researchers in climatology, meteorology, oceanography, and disaster risk management for cross-basin analyses, reanalysis projects, and model validation. Major users include scientists at National Aeronautics and Space Administration, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and policy analysts at United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Overview

The project originated from collaborations among scientists at NOAA, University of Miami, and International Research Institute for Climate and Society to address inconsistencies between datasets like the HURDAT and regional typhoon archives. Early development involved workshops convened with participants from World Meteorological Organization panels, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and domain experts from U.S. Navy forecasting centers. Releases incorporated inputs from archival efforts led by Joint Typhoon Warning Center and retrospective analyses by teams at Colorado State University and CMA researchers. Over successive versions, IBTrACS added historical corrections influenced by reanalysis initiatives such as ERA-Interim, 20th Century Reanalysis, and satellite-era studies using platforms like GOES and Meteosat.

The archive contains position, maximum sustained wind, central pressure, storm type, and observational metadata for tropical cyclones across basins including the North Atlantic Ocean, Eastern Pacific Ocean, Western North Pacific Ocean, North Indian Ocean, Southwest Indian Ocean, Australian region, and South Pacific Ocean. Records link to identifiers used by originators like National Hurricane Center's HURDAT IDs, Joint Typhoon Warning Center's JTWC numbers, and Météo-France identifiers. Data fields align with conventions from International Civil Aviation Organization reporting and include time-stamped fixes at six-hourly intervals or other resolution specified by source agencies such as Japan Meteorological Agency and India Meteorological Department. The archive supports formats favored by researchers, including NetCDF, CSV, and shapefiles used in ArcGIS and QGIS environments.

IBTrACS employs harmonization rules to reconcile differing intensity metrics (e.g., 1-minute versus 10-minute sustained wind definitions used by National Hurricane Center and Japan Meteorological Agency), and it documents provenance of each record with source attribution to agencies like Australian Bureau of Meteorology and Météo-France. Quality control procedures incorporate cross-comparison with satellite-based products from Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer, scatterometer retrievals from ASCAT, and microwave sounder datasets used in studies at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Peer review and expert workshops involving members from World Meteorological Organization and academic centers ensure methodological transparency, and updates reflect corrections identified in reanalysis studies by groups at University of Reading and National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Researchers, forecasters, and educators access IBTrACS through portals maintained by National Centers for Environmental Information and mirror services at university repositories like University of Miami and NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. The archive supports climatological trend analyses, attribution studies cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, validation of coupled models at European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, and risk assessments used by World Bank and United Nations Development Programme. It is employed in applied research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Columbia University, University of Oxford, and operational verification at agencies like Japan Meteorological Agency and Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration.

Critiques of IBTrACS center on heterogeneous source practices from agencies such as Joint Typhoon Warning Center and National Hurricane Center, inconsistent intensity estimation methods exemplified by differences between 1-minute sustained and 10-minute sustained wind conventions, and gaps in historical observations before the satellite era affecting records in basins like the Southern Hemisphere. Scholars at Colorado State University and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research have noted uncertainties that complicate long-term trend attribution discussed in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Ongoing efforts involve community-driven reanalysis projects, coordination with agencies including World Meteorological Organization, and methodological studies at NOAA, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, and leading universities to improve homogeneity and metadata completeness.

Category:Climatological databases