NCDC International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) Project, Version 3

The International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) dataset was developed by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center, which took the initial step of synthesizing and merging best track data from all official Tropical Cyclone Warning Centers (TCWCs) and the WMO Regional Specialized Meteorological Centers (RSMCs) who are responsible for developing and archiving best track data worldwide. In recognizing the deficiency in global tropical cyclone data, and the lack of a publically available dataset, the IBTrACS dataset was produced, which, for the first time, combines existing best track data from over 10 international forecast centers. The dataset contains the position, maximum sustained winds, minimum central pressure, and storm nature for every tropical cyclone globally at 6-hr intervals in UTC. Statistics from the merge are also provided (such as number of centers tracking the storm, range in pressure, median wind speed, etc.). The dataset period is from 1848 to the present with dataset updates performed annually in August. The dataset is archived as netCDF files but can be accessed via a variety of user-friendly formats to facilitate data analysis, including netCDF, Shapefile, and CSV formatted files. The update to version 3 data includes new data sources, bug fixes, shapefile-support, discontinued support of ASCII and new variables.

国际最佳路径气候管理档案（IBTrACS）数据集由美国国家海洋和大气管理局（NOAA）国家气候数据中心开发，该中心首先采取合成与整合全球范围内所有官方热带气旋预警中心（TCWCs）以及世界气象组织区域专业气象中心（RSMCs）所编制的最佳路径数据之初步举措。鉴于全球热带气旋数据的不足以及公开数据集的匮乏，IBTrACS数据集得以问世，该数据集首次将超过10个国际预报中心现存的最佳路径数据相结合。该数据集包含全球范围内每个热带气旋在UTC时间每6小时一次的定位、最大持续风速、最小中心气压和风暴性质。此外，还提供了合并统计数据（例如追踪风暴的中心数量、气压范围、中值风速等）。数据集的时间跨度从1848年至今，且每年8月进行数据更新。数据集以netCDF格式存档，但可通过多种用户友好的格式进行访问，以便利数据分析，包括netCDF、Shapefile和CSV格式文件。版本3数据更新的内容包括新增数据来源、错误修复、支持Shapefile以及停止支持ASCII格式和新变量的引入。