NESP Tropical Cyclone Projections Portal

The NESP Tropical Cyclone Projections Portal is a website with interactive features designed to provide information on the historical and projected climatology of tropical cyclone (TC) tracks in the southern hemisphere, with a particular focus on the Australian region. \n\nTropical cyclone tracks are displayed from periods within baseline and future climates simulated by CMIP5 Global Climate Models using the RCP 8.5 emissions pathway, as well as those observed historically and published in the WMO version of the IBTrACS global best-track archive (v03r10). Various other products are derived from these data sets, including climatologies of and changes in:\n - spatial density of number of TCs per decade; \n - density of storms impacting on Australia's coastline; \n - the simulated number and seasonal cycle of TCs; \n - relationship of projected change in Australian-region TCs with changes in temperature and precipitation in the region.\n\nLineage: Data displayed in the portal were modified and/or filtered tropical cyclone tracks from the IBTrACS best track archive representing observations, or tropical cyclone-like circulations detected in output of CMIP5 global climate models using the RCP 8.5 emissions pathway.\n\nThe visualisations within the portal were developed using the programming language R, utilising the package 'shiny' to develop interactive options. Other R packages used include leaflet, ggplot2, and plotly. The PostgreSQL database was built using python, while the density of TCs were created using a custom Fortran program.