News

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— TC PRIMED v01r01-final for the 2025 AL and CP season now available

TC PRIMED v01r01-final for the 2025 North Atlantic (AL) and central North Pacific (CP) hurricane seasons is now available on NODD.

— TC-ATLAS incorporates TC PRIMED

The new Tropical Cyclone Analysis Tool for Live and Archived Structure (TC-ATLAS) website, a multi-source platform for exploring tropical cyclone vortex structure, now includes TC PRIMED data. This website, created by Michael Fischer from the University of Miami, allows users to explore TC PRIMED in relationship to other tropical cyclone datasets.

— NASA products transition from V07 to V08

TC PRIMED uses NASA products for low-Earth orbit satellite observations. On , NASA transitioned these data from V07 to V08. Because of the change, the TC PRIMED team stopped generating new TC PRIMED v01r01-preliminary files on . The team will post TC PRIMED v01r01-final files for the 2025 tropical cyclone season once final best tracks become available, and the team will work towards producing v02 of TC PRIMED with the new NASA data.

The development team has compiled and released the final version of the TC PRIMED files for the Northern Indian Ocean and Western North Pacific storms in the 2024 tropical cyclone season. The files are up on the AWS S3 bucket and the NCEI repository.

Additionally, the team has updated a variable in the environmental files and included changes to two 2023 Northern Indian Ocean storms. For more details, see our "resolved issues" section.

These updates to TC PRIMED are possible thanks to the Department of Defense Joint Typhoon Warning Center decks publicly available and funding from the United States Department of the Navy Office of Naval Research, which enables continued development and additions of new tropical cyclone seasons.

The development team has compiled and released the final version of the TC PRIMED files for the North Atlantic and eastern North Pacific storms in the 2024 tropical cyclone season. The files are up on the AWS S3 bucket and the NCEI repository. Therefore, the preliminary version for these storms is no longer publicly available.

In addition to the 2024 North Atlantic and eastern North Pacific storms, the National Hurricane Center and Central Pacific Hurricane Center released an updated final best-track information for EP052022 (Hurricane Danielle). TC PRIMED now includes these updates.

These updates to TC PRIMED are possible thanks to the National Hurricane Center and Central Pacific Hurricane Center decks publicly available and funding from the United States Department of the Navy Office of Naval Research, which enables continued development and additions of new tropical cyclone seasons.

The GPM-API package can now obtain, process, and visualize data from the Tropical Cyclone PRecipitation, Infrared, Microwave and Environmental Dataset (TC PRIMED).

GPM-API (https://pypi.org/project/gpm-api/) is a Python interface to download, read, process, and visualize products from the GPM data archive. GPM-API was developed independently of TC PRIMED and has recently included utilities to interface with TC PRIMED data on the Amazon Web Service (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket.

Users can learn more about the GPM-API package here: https://gpm-api.readthedocs.io/en/latest/, and go through the tutorial specific to TC PRIMED here: https://gpm-api.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorials/tutorial_TCPRIMED.html.

Reference: Ghiggi, G., 2024: GPM API Version 0.3.4. EPFL. https://pypi.org/project/gpm-api/. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7753488.

The TC PRIMED development team finalized the dataset documentation for v01r01. This documentation outlines changes since v01r00 and provides more detail about the team compiles TC PRIMED and calculates metrics.

Users can find the dataset documentation on NODD, the official NCEI archive, and by following this link to the publications page.

NOAA highlighted TC PRIMED in the 2024 NOAA Science Report. TC PRIMED is one example of how NOAA and partners are working to reduce impacts from hazardous weather through artificial intelligence ready datasets and machine learning.

The report is available through NOAA Institutional Repository at https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/66854.

The development team has updated several storms to capture post-season changes to tropical cyclone best track files from the National Hurricane Center, Central Pacific Hurricane Center, and Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

What are the changes and the impact of these changes?

Different aspects of the best track storm metadata can change. These include the period over which the best track represents a storm, the storm center position and intensity. In these updates, center position changed between 0.1 and 0.8 degrees with a 15 knot maximum change in intensity.

For more details, see our "resolved issues" section.

The development team has compiled and released the final version of the TC PRIMED files for the Southern Hemisphere storms in the 2023 tropical cyclone season. The files are up on the AWS S3 bucket and should be up on the NCEI repository soon. Therefore, the preliminary version for the Southern Hemisphere storms in the 2023 tropical cyclone season will no longer be publicly available.

These updates to TC PRIMED are possible thanks to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center for making their Southern Hemisphere decks publicly available and funding from the United States Department of the Navy Office of Naval Research, which enables continued development and additions of new tropical cyclone seasons.

The TC PRIMED team recently realized that a variable in the TC PRIMED files was miscalculated. That variable is the storm_heading in the overpass_storm_metadata group and it involves the conversion of the zonal and meridional components of storm motion to direction.

The team has fixed that variable and have uploaded the fixed TC PRIMED files onto the AWS S3 bucket. The fixed files are currently being uploaded to the NCEI repository.

For more details, see our "resolved issues" section.

The TC PRIMED team released the tcprimedapi Python package (https://pypi.org/project/tcprimedapi/1.0a0/) to help users navigate and access the dataset on its Amazon Web Service (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket (https://noaa-nesdis-tcprimed-pds.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html#v01r01/).

The Python package facilitates easier access to TC PRIMED data on the AWS S3 bucket by allowing users to query and retrieve data based on the a) tropical cyclone season, basin and/or number, b) TC PRIMED file type (i.e., particular satellite, sensor, or TC PRIMED environmental files), c) dates, and/or d) version type (final or preliminary). Users can look at examples of its application on its GitHub repository (https://github.com/CSU-CIRA/tcprimedapi/).

The TC PRIMED team rolls out minor release v01r01 on the NOAA Open Data Dissemination.

The new release includes the following changes:

  • Extends the dataset back to and up to , excluding the SH basin
  • Expands the number of storms from around 2,300 to 3,552
  • Increases number of overpasses from around 197,000 to 242,613
  • Adds a preliminary version for the current season (i.e., 2024)
  • Incorporates more environmental information
    • New cylindrical data group
    • Expands diagnostic regions from two to four:
      • 0 to 300 km
      • 0 to 500 km
      • 0 to 800 km
      • 200 to 800 km
    • New environmental diagnostics:
      • Cyclone phase space
      • Eddy momentum flux convergence
      • Equivalent potential temperature
      • Helicity
      • Maximum potential intensity

The latest release is accessible through the TC PRIMED AWS S3 bucket on NODD at https://noaa-nesdis-tcprimed-pds.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html.

The TC PRIMED team would like to thank the United States Department of the Navy Office of Naval Research for providing the support for this release.

The TC PRIMED team participated in the first NOAA Center for Artificial Intelligence/NESDIS Common Cloud Framework (NCCF) Show and Tell.

The NOAA Center for Artificial Intelligence recently released an initial set of interactive open science Jupyter notebooks that highlight NOAA mission area data and machine learning use cases in the form of a Learning Journey Library. The Learning Journey Library increases the economic value and societal benefit of NOAA data and promotes artificial intelligence proficiency for Earth science machine learning applications. Participants got to interact with these Learning Journeys in the NCCF and receive instruction from subject-matter experts. The tropical cyclone case used the Tropical Cyclone PRecipitation, Infrared, and Environmental Dataset based Learning Journey and specifically focused on using these data to develop an artificial neural network to make a precipitation retrieval algorithm for tropical cyclone scenes.

See the NCAI Learning Journey Library to view material used during the Show and Tell.

TC PRIMED highlighted in NESDIS Impacts Briefings for Artificial Intelligence.

NESDIS released a new report called the NESDIS Impacts Briefings. The briefings tell the stories behind NOAA satellites and information and feature work from NOAA satellite missions and environmental data. In the Artificial Intelligence (AI) briefing, NESDIS highlighted the Tropical Cyclone Precipitation, Infrared, Microwave, and Environmental Dataset (TC PRIMED; Razin et al. 2023).

TC PRIMED listed as the NOAA Office of the Chief Information Officer dataset contribution along with the NOAA Center for AI Learning Journey Library to the multi-agency National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot. The Office of Science and Technology Policy and National Science Foundation led NAIRR effort seeks to democratize the AI research and development through aggregating multi-agency AI resources and efforts.

To see more NAIRR Pilot resources, see https://nairrpilot.org/pilot-resources.

See Naufal Razin's interview with the American Meteorological Society (AMS) for a profile in the Bulletin of the AMS and short write up corresponding to the TC PRIMED BAMS article in the issue print and digital edition.

BAMS Digital Edition (access requires an AMS membership).

The TC PRIMED Learning Journey Jupyter notebooks are now available as part of the NOAA Center for Artificial Intelligence (NCAI) Learning Journey Library.

The NCAI Learning Journey Library seeks to enable internal and external NOAA data users to understand AI-ready datasets and explore machine learning in the context of the NOAA mission space. The TC PRIMED Learning Journey, which includes a set of six Python-based Jupyter Notebooks, walks users through understanding TC PRIMED’s data structure, plotting TC PRIMED data, performing an analysis using TC PRIMED, applying a machine learning approach to TC PRIMED, and preprocessing TC PRIMED data for more complex machine learning approaches.

NCAI Learning Journey Library.

The American Meteorological Society publishes the TC PRIMED development team's dataset manuscript in the November issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society!!!

Razin, M. N., C. J. Slocum, J. A. Knaff, P. J. Brown, and M. M. Bell, : Tropical Cyclone Precipitation, Infrared, Microwave, and Environmental Dataset (TC PRIMED). Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 104, E1980–E1998, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0052.1.

The TC PRIMED development team demonstrated the dataset at the 5th NOAA Workshop on Leveraging AI in Environmental Sciences.

For the Learning Journey discussed during the demo at the workshop, see our products page.

TC PRIMED for the 1998 to 2021 seasons is now publicly available through the NOAA Open-Data Dissemination (NODD) program on Amazon Web Services (AWS) through the support of the NOAA Center for Artificial Intelligence. For details on how to access the data from the AWS s3 bucket, see our products page. TC PRIMED will also be available through NCEI shortly. Through NCEI, more fine-grain, storm-level search functionality will be available.

The following URLs provide details about TC PRIMED in the Registry of Open Data on AWS and access to the TC PRIMED AWS s3 bucket on NODD: https://noaa-nesdis-tcprimed-pds.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html.

For details on the structure of the data on NODD, see our products page.

Thanks to support from the Office of Naval Research, TC PRIMED has been extended to include the 2020 and 2021 seasons. With this extension, the dataset now has an additional 23,000 overpasses of over 200 additional tropical cyclones.

CIRA and STAR finalize the TC PRIMED submission agreement with NCEI. This marks the start of data ingest for TC PRIMED at NCEI.

Naufal Razin presents on the artificial intelligence data readiness of TC PRIMED as part of a pilot project with the NOAA Center for Artificial Intelligence at the American Meteorological Society 103rd Annual Meeting. With TC PRIMED pending ingest with NCEI, updates to improve the artificial intelligence data readiness have been incorporated into the data set.

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The TC PRIMED large-scale, storm-centric environmental has been published in the Journal of Climate. For details, see the citations section of the TC PRIMED publications page.

The TC PRIMED manuscripts describing details for the entire dataset and the large-scale, storm-centric environmental diagnostics have been accepted and posted to the Early Online Release. In addition, NCEI has minted the TC PRIMED DOI. For details, see the citations section of the TC PRIMED publications page. Data availability is pending ingest at NCEI.

Naufal Razin presents on "AI-Readiness of the Tropical Cyclone Precipitation, Infrared, Microwave, and Environmental Dataset" at the Research Showcase at the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) July 2022 Meeting. The talk discusses an early evaluation of TC PRIMED against the draft ESIP Checklist to Examine AI-readiness for Open Environmental Datasets.

TC PRIMED receives an "approval for archive" with NCEI. The TC PRIMED development team is waiting for NCEI to initiate data ingest.

Naufal Razin wins the first-place student poster award at the American Meteorological Society 34th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology for “Tropical Cyclone Precipitation, Infrared, Microwave, and Environmental Dataset (TC PRIMED).” His poster is available on the publications page, and more details about the award are in a CSU Department of Atmospheric Science news item.

TC PRIMED development team submits an Advanced Tracking and Resource tool for Archive Collections (ATRAC) request with the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).


Issues

Resolved Issues

— Helicity

We have fixed a variable in the TC PRIMED environmental files that was miscalculated. That variable is the helicity in the diagnostics group of the environmental files. In the previous calculation, we had used the u-wind variable for both the u-wind and v-wind components of the calculation. We have fixed this calculation to now use the u-wind variable and the v-wind variable for the respective u-wind component and v-wind component of the calculation. Please read the following Q and A to understand how this bug may impact you.

I’m not planning to use diagnostics/helicity. Do I need to do anything?

No.

How do I know if I have the latest files?

Files generated prior to 19 September contain information about the update in the global history attribute. Since TC PRIMED files are continually being created, files with the date_created attribute with dates after 19 September are unaffected.

— Best Track Changes

We updated TC PRIMED files to include post-season best-track changes by the US Department of Defense Joint Typhoon Warning Center. These changes affect the tropical cyclone central pressure and storm type, which may affect the environmental diagnostic calculations and storm metadata in all files. Please read the following Q and A to understand how this update may impact you.

Which storms are impacted?

IO052023 and IO082023

How big are the changes?

The tropical cyclone center latitude and longitude changes can differ relative to the previous version anywhere from 0.1 degrees to 0.8 degrees. Whereas the biggest difference in intensity from the previous version is 15 knots for SH192021. For EP082023, the National Hurricane Center updated the tropical cyclone position information from the Central Pacific Hurricane center, which adds two additional best-track entries on top of the described changes.

How do the changes affect TC PRIMED files?

The changes result in new values for the central pressure and storm type in both the TC PRIMED overpass files and environmental files.

— API and NCEI Archive Update

The screening step for the TC PRIMED API and NCEI Archive did not allow for DMSP-F08 and DMSP-F10 platform/satellite overpass files.

How were API users impacted?

API users would have seen an error setting the platform to F08 or F10. But, if they didn't specify these in file_type, then they would have received these overpasses. Version 1.0b of the API accepted the F08 or F10 platforms as the file_type value.

How was the NCEI Archive impacted?

The NCEI Archive rejected overpasses from the F08 or F10 platforms. These data have been backfilled.

Were files on NODD impacted?

No. If you pulled the files from NODD directly, you would not have experienced a problem, and no files were updated with this issue.

— Best Track Changes

We recently updated several TC PRIMED files to include post-season best-track changes by the NOAA NWS National Hurricane Center and Central Pacific Hurricane Center, and the US Department of Defense Joint Typhoon Warning Center. These changes affect the tropical cyclone center latitude and longitude, and/or intensity which, subsequently, may affect the environmental diagnostic calculations and passive microwave overpass availability. Please read the following Q and A to understand how this update may impact you.

Which storms are impacted?

WP092019, IO012020, SH062020, SH242020, SH262020, WP132020, SH012021, SH052021, SH122021, SH132021, SH152021, SH172021, SH192021, SH242021, WP062021, WP182021, WP222021, WP232021, and EP082023

How big are the changes?

The tropical cyclone center latitude and longitude changes can differ relative to the previous version anywhere from 0.1 degrees to 0.8 degrees. Whereas the biggest difference in intensity from the previous version is 15 knots for SH192021. For EP082023, the National Hurricane Center updated the tropical cyclone position information from the Central Pacific Hurricane center, which adds two additional best-track entries on top of the described changes.

How do the changes affect TC PRIMED files?

Environmental files: The changes in the tropical cyclone best-track position may affect the calculation of the environmental diagnostics.

Overpass files: The changes in the tropical cyclone best-track position affect the calculation of the overpass coverage fraction, and result in the inclusion of new overpasses and the exclusion of old overpasses, most prominently evident in EP082023.

Both environmental and overpass files: The differences in tropical cyclone best-track intensity results in new values for the tropical cyclone intensity and intensity change.

Is there a detailed documentation of the changes?

Users can find a list of detailed changes in the global “history” attribute in both the environmental and overpass files for the affected storms.

— Storm Heading

The TC PRIMED team discovered and addressed an issue in how a variable in the TC PRIMED files was calculated. That variable is the storm_heading in the overpass_storm_metadata group and it involves the conversion of the zonal and meridional components of storm motion to direction.

The team has fixed that variable and have uploaded the fixed TC PRIMED files onto the AWS S3 bucket. The fixed files are currently being uploaded to the NCEI repository.

I’m not planning to use overpass_storm_metadata/storm_heading. Do I need to do anything?

No. You are not impacted.

I don’t want to redownload the data. How can I address this in my copy of the files?

If you don't want to redownload and need overpass_storm_metadata/storm_heading, you can calculate the storm_heading yourself by using the storm_speed_meridional_component and storm_speed_zonal_component with something like

storm_heading = (90-arctan2(storm_speed_meridional_component, storm_speed_zonal_component)*180/pi)%360
The equation assumes the output of arctan2 is in radians. Please check the input order for arctan2 in your programming language.

I've decided that I want to redownload the files. What’s the best way?

If you want to redownload all files, see details on this page for using the AWS Command Line Interface. If you only want a subset of files, check out our tcprimedapi Python API.

I see storm_heading in two groups in the env files: 1) overpass_storm_metadata and 2) storm_metadata. Is storm_heading impacted in both?

No. storm_metadata/storm_heading is unaffected. Only overpass_storm_metadata/storm_heading contained incorrect values.

How do I know if I have the latest files?

Files generated prior to 19 November contain information about the update in the global history attribute as well as the date_modified and date_metadata_modified global/group attributes. Since TC PRIMED files are continually being created, files with the date_created attribute with dates after 19 November are unaffected.

When will the fixed files be available?

We have uploaded the fixed files onto the AWS S3 bucket. We are also pushing the fixed files to NCEI. However, due to procedures internal to NCEI in making files available, we do not know when the files on NCEI will be updated. Again, please check the file metadata, as described above, to know if you have the latest update.

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