Software

Betacast

ExtraTrack exampleBetacast is a software package that allows easy and robust implementation of initialized hindcasts in CESM in order to compare model data with observational campaigns. It can use a variety of input atmospheric analyses (e.g., ERA5, CFSR, GFS), SST fields (e.g., NOAA-OI, HadSST) and work on a variety of atmospheric dynamical cores (e.g., CAM-SE, MPAS, CAM-FV, HOMME). It has been used for a variety of applications, including to find and assess model errors, develop data analysis techniques, and quantify the impact of climate change on individual storms. Betacast was first described in Zarzycki and Jablonowski, 2015, MWR.

Betacast is available via Github.



TempestExtremes

TempestExtremes exampleTempestExtremes is a suite of flexible detection and characterization algorithms developed for processing large climate datasets. This package uses an algorithmic framework known as "MapReduce" to first detect candidate events at individual times using specified criteria. Stitching is then used to assess the evolution of related detections over time. The result is an objective calculation of the climate indicator that can be automated and parallelized for multiple datasets. Generalized kernels (such as defining local minima/maxima, contours, radial integrals, areal/closed contours, etc.) are available as "building blocks," allowing users to easily define algorithms on the command line. Structured and unstructured NetCDF meshes are supported natively. TempestExtremes has been used for applications such as quantifying tropical cyclones, extratropical cyclones, snowstorms, mesoscale convection, atmospheric rivers, and blocking events in climate data and verifying hurricane forecasts.

TempestExtremes (and example scripts/data) is available on Github.



CyMeP

CyMeP exampleThe Cyclone Metrics Package (CyMeP) is a Python suite (with NCL visualization) designed to objectively calculate a host of metrics pertaining to tropical cyclones in gridded climate data. These metrics range in a hierarchy of complexity from annual climatologies of storm count, tropical cyclone days, and accumulated cyclone energy to spatial and temporal correlations of storm activity. User-configurable options allow for specific ocean basins or time periods to be isolated and simple-to-visualize scorecards provide quick, robust dataset intercomparison. Other diagnostics include Taylor diagrams, spatial maps and timeseries graphs of storm activity, and conditional hit rate/false alarm statistics for observational data.

A manuscript highlighting the metrics in CyMeP and three applications (reanalysis evaluation, domain sensitivity, model configuration impacts on TCs) was published in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.

CyMeP (and example scripts/data) is available on Github.



ExtraTrack

ExtraTrack exampleThe Extratropical Transition (tropical cyclone) Tracker (ExTraTrack) is a wrapper codebase that calculates Cyclone Phase Space (CPS) parameters from tropical cyclone trajectories and associated gridded data. Given pointwise trajectories (from either an observational product such as IBTrACS or algorithmic software, such as TempestExtremes), the code extracts thermal symmetry and shallow/deep warm/cold core metrics from gridded netCDF data. The software follows storms following the termination of a tropical trajectory, allowing the full lifecycle of a tropical cyclone to be assessed, from tropical cyclogenesis, to onset of extratropical transition and eventual evolution to a fully cold-core, baroclinic system. Structured, CF-compliant, NetCDF data are supported, but functions used to calculate CPS values are also provided as standalone NCL, allowing for users to modify driver code to suit different data needs if necessary.

ExTraTrack (and example scripts/data) is available on Github.



ESTA

ESTA exampleThe Extratropical Snowstorm Tracking Algorithm (ESTA) is a pipeline that can be applied to large gridded weather and climate datasets to A.) detect wintertime extratropical cyclones along the eastern coast of North America, B.) extract storm precipitation (and other quantities) along the trajectory, and C.) compute storm-level metrics such as the Regional Snowfall Index (RSI). Like ExTraTrack, the core Lagrangian feature tracker functionality is based on TempestExtremes with ancillary NCL to perform analysis specifically to synoptic-scale snowstorms. The software was first used to track snowstorms in CESM LENS in Zarzycki, 2018, GRL.

ESTA (pre-release code) is available on Github.