7 The Atlantic Hurricane Database Re-analysis Project: Documentation for 1851-1910 Alterations and Additions to the HURDAT Database

• Main Authors: Christopher W. L, Craig Anderson, Noel Charles, Gilbert Clark, Jose Fern, Paul Hungerford, Charlie Neumann
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Diaz; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.207.4796; http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/rpibook-final04.pdf

A re-analysis of the Atlantic basin tropical storm and hurricane database (“best track”) for the period of 1851 to 1910 has been completed. This reworking and extension back in time of the main archive for tropical cyclones of the North Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico was necessary to correct systematic and random errors and biases in the data as well as to incorporate the recent historical analyses by Partagas and Diaz. The re-analysis project provides the revised tropical storm and hurricane database, a metadata file detailing individual changes for each tropical cyclone, a “center fix ” file of raw tropical cyclone observations, a collection of U.S. landfalling tropical storms and hurricanes, and comments from/replies to the National Hurricane Center’s Best Track Change Committee. This chapter details the methodologies and references utilized for this re-analysis of the Atlantic tropical cyclone record. This chapter provides documentation of the first efforts to re-analyze the National Hurricane Center's (NHC's) North Atlantic hurricane database (or HURDAT, also called “best tracks ” since they are the “best ” determination of track and intensity in a