Department of Meteorology 4520
and
NOAA Cooperative Institute in
Tropical Meteorology
Florida State University
Tallahassee FL 32306
Last modification - 29 May 1998
The purpose of this guide is to orient the casual or novice user of
tropical weather data to the vast amounts of information that is
available to anyone who has direct or indirect access to the National
Weather Service Family of Services (otherwise known as NWS FOS). This is
the method by which most Universities which offer meteorology programs
receive their data. Our primary audience here consists of new students in
our meteorology program and teachers in Florida (and elsewhere) who
participate in the Florida EXPLORES! program, our
K-12 outreach program in satellite and tropical meteorology.
In this guide, we will introduce the reader to the types of information available, and we will provide links to all products related to tropical weather that we receive on our server. If you notice that a product which you expect to find is absent, or difficult to find, please feel free to let us know, and we will attempt to fix or include it. If you are looking for a nice graphical interface to basic North Atlantic activity, visit the unofficial EXPLORES!/FSU Meteorology tropical weather site, or the official site of the NOAA Tropical Prediction Center [a.k.a., THE National Hurricane Center].
Why do we do this? Well, it turns out that the World Meteorological Organization has a rule which says that meteorological information that is disseminated by national governments must be in a specific coded format, which must be organized by "bulletin headers." If you are really interested in it, you can find out more on-line here (WMO header information). As we receive these data, we must (as meteorologists) be aware of these "headers" - but most users probably do not need to know what they are. It is easy for us to put a server together which lists data by its header, but then that becomes hard for anyone other than a meteorologist to get the information that they really need. So we've decided to organize these data into a more useful (we hope) document. For those users who are truly hard-core and want to go straight to the raw data, you'll find it here (FSU tropical weather ftp index).
This section is organized by geographic region.
The primary source for our information is the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/Tropical Prediction Center (TPC), still known in part as the National Hurricane Center (NHC). TPC is part of the National Weather Service, and it is responsible for monitoring the tropical Atlantic Ocean basins (including the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico), as well as the eastern Pacific Ocean. By international agreement, they produce advisories and assist in coordination of watch and warning activities throughout North and South America. The British Meteorological Office (in Bracknell) also offers products.
There are several centers which produce statements which are picked up
by our NWS FOS feed, which includes some international products related
to typhoons. Among the other major centers which produce products for the
Pacific Ocean are:
The products available which are usually of most interest are those public advisories which are designed to routinely report on tropical weather conditions, or those advisories which report upon active tropical systems. These are normally written in plain language format, and sometimes are available in Spanish as well as English on NWS FOS.
i. Routine outlooks
At least daily advisories for each ocean basin are given by the various operational centers. Here is where to find the latest outlook you might be interested in:
Warning...to the reader...these are sometimes written with the meteorologist in mind and may contain very detailed technical discussions. These are generally not as useful to the non-meteorologist, but usually provide a bit more insight into storm structure and the difficult issues involved in forecasting, than the public advisories do.
Each six hours (routinely), and more often if necessary, the centers will issue (marine) warnings which update the status and forecast positions for any storm which has reached at least tropical depression intensity. These bulletins are organized similar to the forecast discussions (above).
At least twice each day, a satellite-based product is available from a few forecast centers which present detailed discussions of all meteorological features present on satellite imagery, including detailed nephanalyses (cloud field analyses). These products are also organized by geographic region.
An extensive database exists which combines historical information about tropical cyclone tracks for the North Atlantic and East Pacific oceans with model guidance. This enables the Tropical Prediction Center in Miami to produce probabilistic "strike probability" forecasts for tropical cyclone landfall near a wide variety of locations. These products are also organized into groups of 5 possible headers; the following products are available (as issued by TPC):
These forecasts are sometimes helpful as additional aids in following tropical systems. They are subdivided into real high seas forecasts and offshore waters forecasts. The latest product for each geographic area is linked below.
These data include primarily coded data from reconnaissance aircraft. A wealth of information from automated and staffed weather stations may also be available on this and numerous other WWW weather information servers. Recently, an anonymous poster to a mailing list posted a very nice orientation to the decoding of reconnaissance data, and we have converted that guide to a WWW document as well. You'll find all the details you'd ever want here.
The NOAA and Air Force hurricane hunter aircraft, as well as the new NOAA Jet all produce reports as described in a separate Guide to Reconnaissance Reports, which includes specific decode instructions and examples for each of the four types of report listed below. Below we break down the report types so that the product you want is easily retrieved.
This is the one most people want - this is what the reconnaissance crew sends to the TPC so that they may prepare their advisories, discussions, and warnings. It generally includes reports of the maximum winds encountered, minimum pressure, and other meteorologically-relevant parameters for tropical cyclone monitoring. Several of these may be sent per flight.
Lots of real strange looking numbers that tell meteorologists a wealth of information on storm structure, but little real value to the general public.
Each flight generates lots of these spot reports, which generally report meteorological conditions at a single position (latitude, longitude, elevation/pressure level) as the aircraft is in the environment of the storm, or in the vicinity of the storm. Sometimes interesting, as flight reports often are given at positions of maximum winds aloft.
There is a code called the radiosonde code which is used for reporting all upper-air observations taken at radiosonde locations around the world. This code is also used from dropsondes which are deployed from hurricane reconnaissance aircraft.
Not yet available on the FOS, therefore not available on our server. These data may include supplemental observations from ships or upper-air sites, model forecast data, etc., in the future.
The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Mark Laufersweiler and Mr. Jon Rizzo for the preparation of the ftp/gopher/WWW servers in the FSU Department of Meteorology. This document could not have been organized without their support and restructuring of our local data management software. Mr. Bob Broedel has helped guide the department towards the improvement of our network, inside and outside the building, which helps to ensure timely delivery for all of our data products to our students and the outside world. Software and data feeds are provided by Unidata, and the support of the Unidata Program Center staff is gratefully acknowledged...you know who you are! Prof. Kevin Kloesel has always provided excellent feedback on these efforts and continues to be an inspirational colleague! Thanks also to the people at the National Weather Service who maintain Family of Services, to Alden Communications for their involvement in the program, and to our upstream IDD feed sites!
Paul Ruscher ruscher@met.fsu.edu
Footnotes
1. Note: all Guam tropical monitoring activities are scheduled to be moved to the new consolidated joint warning center in Honolulu after the 1998 season is over.