"Climate Change and Southern Hemisphere Tropical Cyclones" International Initiative – Progress since the First International Conference on Indian Ocean Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change - Monitoring and Prediction of Tropical Cyclones in the Indian Ocean and Climate Change - page 18

(La Reunion, France and Nadi, Fiji) and four Tropical Cyclone Warning Centres
(Brisbane, Darwin and Perth in Australia and Wellington in New Zealand), in
collaboration with the National Climate Centre at the Australian Bureau of
Meteorology, prepared the first consolidated tropical cyclone archive in 2003.
Following this success, subsequent steps in gradual improvement of the SH
TC archive have been undertaken through this International Initiative and the
archive now consists of best track data covering the satellite era, i.e. from
1969-70 to 2009-10 cyclone seasons. As a result of the International Initiative,
significant progress in understanding variability in TC activity in the SH was
achieved and outcomes of the developed TC climatology have been presented
at the First International Conference on Indian Ocean Tropical Cyclones and
Climate Change held in Muscat, Oman, in March 2009 (Kuleshov et al., 2010b).
Since the first conference, considerable progress has been achieved in
developing a web-based information tool to visualise and analyse historical
cyclone data, further understanding spatial and temporal variability in TC
activity due to El Niño-Southern Oscillation, estimating long-term cyclone
trends in the South Indian and the South Pacific Oceans, and seasonal prediction
of cyclone activity. This presentation highlights some of the important
achievements of the “Climate change and Southern Hemisphere tropical
cyclone” International Initiative over the past two years.
2. Southern Hemisphere Tropical Cyclone Archive
The WMO Tropical Cyclone Programme has established areas of responsibility
for TC warning which extend across the regional bodies and also extend across
the ocean basins (WMO, 2002a; WMO, 2002b). In the SH, the Regional
Specialised Meteorological Centre (RSMC) in La Réunion is responsible for
providing cyclone watch over the western South Indian Ocean (SIO). The
responsibility for the preparation of marine TC forecasts and warnings in the
South Pacific Ocean (SPO) and the eastern SIO is shared amongst Australia
(Brisbane, Darwin and Perth Tropical Cyclone Warning Centres), Fiji (Nadi
RSMC), Papua New Guinea (Port Moresby) and New Zealand (Wellington).
The national meteorological services also archive records of TC occurrences
in their areas of responsibility. Historical records of TC occurrences in the SH
go back a few hundred years. For example, Australian records go back to the
late 18th century. However, length of records in TC archives, and their quality,
vary considerably. It is widely accepted that TC records in the Australian region
and the SH are relatively complete after meteorological satellites came in
operational use in the late 1960s (Holland, 1981).
Since 1999, considerable efforts were put in preparing consolidated
historical TC records under the “Climate change and Southern Hemisphere
tropical cyclones” International Initiative and the first TC archive for the SH
(jointly, SHTC) has been prepared at the National Climate Centre, Australian
Bureau of Meteorology in 2003 (Kuleshov and de Hoedt, 2003). Since then,