On the desirability and feasibility of a global reanalysis of tropical cyclones

Accurate records of historical tropical cyclones are invaluable for scientific research and risk quantification. Yet most tropical cyclone data were collected in aid of operational forecasting with mixed attention to their use as a climate archive. To remedy this, a workshop was convened in Asheville, North Carolina, on 22–23 May 2017 to explore the feasibility of performing a global reanalysis of tropical cyclones and to lay the foundations for a set of standards for future observations. The workshop was funded by the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences' Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI), a nonprofit organization supported by the risk transfer industry and focused on questions surrounding the quantification of catastrophic risk. Comprehensive, best-state reanalyses of all western North Pacific tropical cyclones during the period of aircraft reconnaissance, 1946–87 were analyzed. This would parallel the ongoing reanalysis of North Atlantic tropical cyclones with the objective of obtaining the best estimate of the state of the cyclone at each time. A comprehensive, best-state reanalysis was done for all basins that utilizes objective state estimation methods to blend all available data. The workshop concluded with detailed discussions of the financial and human resources that would be required to carry out the proposed work.