Deep Convective Cloud System Monitoring Database - TOOCAN v2.08 Africa

The TOOCAN database is a level-2 product of Deep Convective Cloud Systems (DCS) parameters derived from Meteosat measurements. Fundamental Climate Data Records of Meteosat First and Second Generation instruments MVIRI and SEVIRI (John et al., 2019) are used as input for the TOOCAN (Fiolleau and Roca 2013) which is a cloud tracking algorithm to detect and track DCS from the geostationary infrared observations. TOOCAN data provides integrated morphological parameters of tropical DCS such as location and time of initiation and dissipation, lifetime duration, propagated distance, and maximum extent. The data are available for region with boundaries 40° S to 40° N and 55° W to 55° E for the 1981-2023 period. The data has been used to reveal changes in convective organisation over tropical Africa and Atlantic Ocean (Rocal et al., 2024).

The TOOCAN database is composed by two types of files:
1. Regional segmented images at a 0.04° spatial resolution and a 30-minute temporal frequency (in NETCDF).
2. Regional and monthly tracking files (in ASCII and in NETCDF) documenting the DCS morphological parameters at each 30 minute-step of their life cycles.

Each DCS is then described by a unique label, which is useful for making the link between a given DCS described in the tracking files and the same DCS identified in the segmented images. Thus, using both the tracking file and the segmented images provides access to all the pixels of a given DCS identified in the segmented images, as well as to its morphological parameters in the monthly tracking files.