On the Classification of Extreme Atlantic Hurricanes Utilizing Mid-Twentieth-Century Monitoring Capabilities*

Abstract

Routine military aircraft reconnaissance of tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Basin began in 1944.According to the preliminary reanalysis of the 1944-1953 Atlantic hurricane seasons (Hagen et al. 2012), the tropical cyclones of that decade that were sampled one or more times by aircraft reconnaissance are listed below according to revised storm number. Most of the new tropical cyclones and all of the cyclones that stayed completely in the eastern half of the basin were not sampled, and some cyclones in the western half of the basin were not sampled as well. Most of these were short-lived tropical storms or storms that were over water for less than a day.The list of tropical cyclones in this appendix indicates whether each cyclone was sampled one or more times by aircraft. The column on the right lists the number of TC days during the cyclone's lifetime during which there was at least one aircraft reconnaissance flight. TC days for which the cyclone was overland for all 24 hours are not included in the days column. The phrase "excluding E. Atlantic only" means that tropical cyclones who's entire lifetime occurred in the eastern Atlantic and outside the range of aircraft reconnaissance were not tallied in that metric.The phrase "extra E. Atlantic days" adds up the number of days TCs spent over the east Atlantic that eventually reached the western Atlantic. For the ten-year period of 1944-53, there was aircraft reconnaissance on 381/512 (74%) of the days during which there was a TC occurring in the western half of the basin that was listed in the original HURDAT database. Storm (Dates) At least 1 flight?Days with at least 1 flight

Trend Analysis with a New Global Record of Tropical Cyclone Intensity

“…These data were, and are, generally collected in an operational forecasting setting and represent the best technology and analysis protocols of the time (e.g., Hagen et al 2012). Because the technology and analysis protocols have progressively changed over time, the data naturally contain temporal heterogeneities.…”

“…As with frequency, estimates of tropical cyclone intensity in the best track are also heterogeneous Hagen and Landsea 2012). For example, regular in situ intensity measurements from aircraft reconnaissance into tropical cyclones began around 1948 but were terminated in the western North Pacific in 1987, which introduced a discontinuity into intensity data in the regional best track (Martin and Gray 1993).…”

Extreme Atlantic Hurricane Probability of Occurrence Through the Metastatistical Extreme Value Distribution

“…Several analyses (Hagen & Landsea, ; Vecchi & Knutson, ; Villarini et al, ) point out that yearly numbers of hurricanes in the early observational period are affected by significant underestimation, chiefly due to the likely underdetection of hurricanes in the presatellite area. Vecchi and Knutson () defined upward adjustments to be applied to the total number of hurricanes observed prior to 1960, which are widely accepted and used in hurricane trend studies (e.g., see Villarini et al, ).…”

“…The reduced sensitivity of monitoring approaches in the presatellite era lead to a well‐known and studied underreporting of the number of hurricanes in the early observational period. The number of undetected hurricanes before the advent of remote sensing has been quantified, and the implications of these heterogeneities in the HURDAT2 data set have been extensively studied (Chang & Guo, ; Hagen & Landsea, ; Vecchi & Knutson, ; Villarini et al, ; Villarini et al, ). Corrections to hurricane undercount (Vecchi & Knutson, ) are also used here, to compare extremes estimated from corrected and uncorrected LMI time series.…”

Using Proxy Records to Document Gulf of Mexico Tropical Cyclones from 1820-1915

“…Others agree that tropical cyclone frequencies are likely underestimated due to missing storms, and that the lack of traffic outside shipping lanes causes many non-landfalling tropical cyclones to be missed [2]. Corroborating those findings, studies note that HURDAT in the pre-satellite era is likely to have missed some category 4 and 5 tropical cyclones due to limited surface observations [4]. In analyzing the “best track” data via a survey of hurricane specialists charged with updating the database, a new format (HURDAT2; version 2) is designed to reduce uncertainties in wind radii and intensities (http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/Data_Storm.html) [5].…”