This is the repository for the Tropical Cyclone Precipitation Dataset, or TCPDat.
TCPDat: Tropical Cyclone Precipitation Dataset Public version 1.0 release 1.0 Date updated: 03/02/2020 (dd/mm/yyyy)
If you use this code or the pre-generated TCPDat data, please include the following citation (or whichever citation style your journal of choice requies):
Bregy, J.C., J.T. Maxwell, S.M. Robeson, J.T. Ortegren, P.T. Soulé, and P.A. Knapp, 2019: Spatiotemporal variability of tropical cyclone precipitation using a high-resolution, gridded (0.25° x 0.25°) dataset for the eastern United States, 1948–2015. Journal of Climate, 33(5), 1803–1819, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0885.1.
Stable link to the original paper: https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0885.1
This code generates a gridded tropical cyclone precipitation (TCP) product for the eastern United States (i.e., east of the Rocky Mountain continental divide) from 1948 to present-1 (or present-2, depending on the DOY). This script requires two (2) publically available datasets in order to create TCPDat. The first is HURDAT2, specifically the North Atlantic version of IBTrACS (International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship). The script is designed to work with the netCDF version of IBTrACS. You can find the latest version of IBTrACS at: Cite IBTrACS accordingly.
The other dataset required is the Climate Prediction Center Unified Guage-Based Analysis of Daily Precipitation over CONUS (CPC US Unified; URD) from the Physical Sciences Division of the Earth Systems Research Laboratory. The latest version can be found here: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/thredds/catalog/Datasets/cpc_us_precip/catalog.html (Note: the years 2007 onward are located in the RT subfile. CPC started doing something different. It's inconvenient, but such is life.) Like IBTrACS, CPC US Unified should be a netCDF. You will have to download gridded precipitation for each year that you are interested in. The script is written to cover every year starting at 1948 (per CPC US Unified). In future iterations, I plan to have query statements that allow you to define your time range, but plans always look great on paper. Anyway, cite CPC US Unified accordingly.
This is my attempt at annotating this code. It is going to be rough; this is literally the first time I have ever done something like this. Let the GitHub gods have mercy upon my digital soul. If there are any questions about anything that is in the code, or if you have any suggestions to improve the code, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me. My most frequently checked email is [email protected], but I also have a stable address at [email protected]. I suppose you could get in touch via GitHub, ResearchGate, or Twitter (@prehistormic) if you would like.
READ THIS BEFORE RUNNING THE SCRIPT You will need to create several folders for this script to work. Each folder houses different data, and the code moves between different folders to either use or save datasets. I wrote it this way to force myself to be organized (normally, I'm not, but I knew my future self would genuinely appreciate it). Here are the folders that you will need:
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A folder containing your CPC US Unified files. I called my CONUS_daily_precip_1948_2016. (I accidentally downloaded p2016.nc, but HURDAT2 had not been updated to include 2016.) I will be changing the file name in the command to CONUS_daily_precip, so I suggest that you create a file with the same name. That, or change the name in the code yourself. Alternatively, you could just comment out directory changes that are used to access data as long as the folder containing your precipitation (and I suppose IBTrACS, too) is included whenever you set your path.
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A folder for the TCP data. I have a line in the code that creates that folder. It is named TCP_data.