Historical Hurricane track accuracy

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NC George
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Historical Hurricane track accuracy

#1 Postby NC George » Fri Mar 09, 2007 10:35 pm

I'm completing a project for a certificate program I'm taking in GIS (Geographic Information Systems.) The task is to create a map that shows some area of uncertainty. I have chosen to map landfall locations of hurricanes in NC. I have the atlantic hurricane tracks, and have plotted landfall points for NC. My question is how do you think the accuracy of hurricanes tracks has changed over the past 150 years? For instance, with radar and satellite imagery, hurricane tracks are accurate down less than a mile, as we can look through the eye and see landfall in some storms, and use radar to plot the exact location of the center of the eye at landfall. Before these two innovations, landfall had to have some measure of uncertainty (perhaps no witnesses, etc.) My question is how much, and what would the breakpoint years be?

As a side question, if anyone knows when a radar station was put on Cape Hatteras or Wilmington, NC, that would be helpful. Also what year was satellite first used to photograph hurricanes as they made landfall?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

George
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#2 Postby HURAKAN » Fri Mar 09, 2007 10:58 pm

Satellites have improved almost to perfection the abilities of Meteorologists to track storms since every step they take is being photographed. Before the satellite era things become a lot more uncertain. Since the 1940s airplanes have been tracking storms in the Atlantic detecting storms already formed or in process of doing so. This provides a lot of information which helps Meteorologists track the storms somewhat accurately. Before the 1940s ship encounters with hurricanes and hurricane landfall provided most of the information. For example, if there was a landfall in Puerto Rico and then a day later the storm made a landfall in the Bahamas, this would indicate that everyone from Florida to the Carolinas should get ready.

There is almost no way to measure how the satellites have improved and revolutionized the science of tracking hurricanes. Today a storm can be tracked to days before being categorized, and with the help of computer models, it can be hypothesized the formation of a tropical cyclones days before the disturbance itself begins to develop.
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Re: Historical Hurricane track accuracy

#3 Postby caneflyer » Sat Mar 10, 2007 7:28 am

NC George wrote:For instance, with radar and satellite imagery, hurricane tracks are accurate down less than a mile, as we can look through the eye and see landfall in some storms, and use radar to plot the exact location of the center of the eye at landfall.


Storm tracks aren't quite that accurate, at least not if you're talking about the official NHC record (the HURDAT data base, or alternatively the best tracks given in the NHC Tropical Cyclone Reports). This is for several reasons:

1. Official tracks are given to the nearest tenth of a degree lat and lon, which is equivalent to 6 nm N/S and somewhat less than that E/W. Therefore, any given specified position is likely to have an error of a few nautical miles just because of the way the position is specified.

2. The definition of the center of a tropical cyclone is the vertical axis of the wind or pressure minimum. NHC tries to estimate the center location at the surface. However, the location of the center changes with altitude and neither radar nor satellite (nor, often, aircraft either) can see the surface center - they are always seeing something higher. Variation of the location of the center with altitude can also be a few miles (sometimes more). Further, the pressure and wind centers are not in dynamical balance and will generally not be exactly co-located.

3. NHC best tracks have some deliberate smoothing in them. It is not possible to replicate every track wiggle in a 6-hourly best track, so even the positions at the synoptic times are not perfect representations of the actual location at that time.

Bottom line is that even under the best of circumstances, center position accuracy is on the order of a few miles.
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Derek Ortt

#4 Postby Derek Ortt » Sat Mar 10, 2007 12:33 pm

track accuracy is fine. I wouldn't worry about the new NM errors

The intensityr ecord in many places is worthless though. Worth less than German money during the 1920s
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#5 Postby Ptarmigan » Sat Mar 10, 2007 12:44 pm

Derek Ortt wrote:track accuracy is fine. I wouldn't worry about the new NM errors

The intensityr ecord in many places is worthless though. Worth less than German money during the 1920s


I am always skeptical of those records especially before 1980s. 1914 for example only recorded one storm, even though there were more, at least 6 storms. I know 1914 was an El Nino year.
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