Reanalysis of the late 1950s and early 1960s Atlantic Hurricane Seasons

32nd Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, 2016 Reanalysis of the late 1950s and early 1960s Atlantic Hurricane Seasons Sandy Delgado and Chris Landsea

The Hurricane Database, known as HURDAT2, is the main historical archive of all tropical storms, subtropical storms, and hurricanes in the North Atlantic Basin, which includes the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, from 1851 to the present. HURDAT2 is maintained and updated annually by the National Hurricane Center at Miami, Florida. Today, HURDAT is widely used by research scientists, operational hurricane forecasters, insurance companies, emergency managers and others. Thus, its accuracy is essential, but previous work has shown that a reanalysis of HURDAT2 is necessary because it contains both random errors and systematic biases. The Atlantic Hurricane Reanalysis Project is an ongoing effort to correct the errors in HURDAT2 and to provide as accurate of a database as is possible with utilization of all available data.

The work reported on here covers the late 1950s and early 1960s hurricane seasons during the early years of land-based radar and satellite imagery from polar orbiting satellites. The track and intensity of each existing tropical cyclone has been reassessed, and previously unrecognized tropical cyclones have been discovered, analyzed, and included into HURDAT2. Changes to the number of tropical storms, hurricanes, major hurricanes, accumulated cyclone energy, and U.S. landfalling hurricanes are determined. A brief overview of the reanalysis methodology will be provided and the official results of the reanalysis approved as of the time of the conference will be shown.