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HURDATFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The North Atlantic hurricane database, or HURDAT, is the database for all tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, since 1851.[1][2][3]
HistoryThe original database of six-hourly positions and intensities were put together in the 1960s in support of the Apollo space program to help provide statistical track forecast guidance. In the intervening years, this database - which is now freely and easily accessible on the Internet from the National Hurricane Center's (NHC's) Webpage - has been utilized for a wide variety of uses: climatic change studies, seasonal forecasting, risk assessment for county emergency managers, analysis of potential losses for insurance and business interests, intensity forecasting techniques and verification of official and various model predictions of track and intensity. HURDAT was not designed with all of these uses in mind when it was first put together and not all of them may be appropriate given its original motivation. HURDAT contains numerous systematic as sell as some random errors in the database. Additionally, analysis techniques have changed over the years at NHC as their understanding of tropical cyclones has developed, leading to biases in the historical database. Another difficulty in applying the hurricane database to studies concerned with landfalling events is the lack exact location, time and intensity at hurricane landfall. Re-analysis ProjectMain article: Atlantic hurricane reanalysis
HURDAT has been updated significantly only twice before. The first time was in 2001 when data for years 1851 to 1885 were added to the database. The second time was August 2002 when Hurricane Andrew was upgraded to a Category 5. Recent efforts into uncovering undocumented historical hurricanes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries led by Jose Fernandez-Partagas have greatly increased our knowledge of these past events, which are not yet incorporated into the HURDAT database. Because of all of these issues, a re-analysis of the Atlantic hurricane database is being attempted that will be completed in three years. In addition to the groundbreaking work by Partagas, additional analyses, digitization and quality control of the data was carried out by researchers at the NOAA Hurricane Research Division funded by the NOAA Office of Global Programs. Over the next two years, this re-analysis will continue to progress through the remainder of the 20th Century. Over 5000 additions and alterations are now approved for the 1851 to 1910 era by the National Hurricane Center's Best Track Change Committee. (This same process was utilized for the upgrade of 1992's Hurricane Andrew to a Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale last August.) This work on historical hurricanes was originally conducted by the late Jose Fernandez Partagas. Additional analyses, digitization and quality control of the data was carried out by researchers at the NOAA Hurricane Research Division funded by NOAA Office of Global Programs. Over the next two years, this re-analysis will continue to progress through the remainder of the 20th Century. Official changes to the Atlantic hurricane database are approved by the National Hurricane Center Best Track Change Committee. Thus research conducted by Chris Landsea and colleagues as part of the Atlantic hurricane database reanalysis project likewise goes through this review process. Not all Landsea's recommendations are accepted by the Committee. DataThere are seven files that make up the Re-Analysis project:
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