User:Jason Rees/BT

Atlantic
During 1959 a technical paper was published by the United States Weather Bureau, which consolidated several sources of records in to a single publication. These sources included annual summaries that had been published in the Monthly Weather Review at various times since 1922, unpublished materials from the Hurricane forecast offices and other studies on hurricanes and hurricane climatology back to around 1886. While combining the sources, position errors of over 100 mi were found for several hurricanes shown in more than one source. Therefore, the positions of all of the systems that were considered to have tropical characteristics, were compared with the historical weather maps of the daily synoptic series. The most reliable positions and intensities were then plotted on a series of annual track charts, before being reviewed by the hurricane forecast centres, Extended Forecast Section and the National Hurricane Research Project. The most accurate and consistent locations from the reviews were then plotted on the maps and published.

Eastern Pacific
The Eastern Pacific best track database was initially compiled on magnetic tape in 1976 for the seasons between 1949 and 1975, at the NHC to help with the development of two tropical cyclone forecast models, which required tracks of past cyclones as a base for its predictions. The database was based on records held by the United States Navy and were interpolated from 12 hourly intervals to 6 hourly intervals based on a scheme devised by Hiroshi Akima in 1970. Initially tracks for the Central Pacific region and tracks for tropical depressions that did not develop into tropical storms or hurricanes were not included within the database. After the database had been created Arthur Pike of the NHC made some internal adjustments, while in 1980 a review was made by Arnold Court under contract from the United States National Weather Service and resulted in additions and/or modifications to 81 tracks in the database. Between 1976 - 1987, the NHC archived best track data from the Eastern Pacific Hurricane Center (EPHC), and in 1982 started including information on Central Pacific tropical storms and hurricanes started to be included in the database based on data from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center and research done by Samuel Shaw of the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC) in 1981. The format of the database was completely revised by the NHC during 1984, so that the format could resemble the Atlantic database before they took over the warning responsibility from the EPHC for the Eastern Pacific during 1988. During 2008 and 2013 several revisions were made to the database to extend tracks in land, based on reports in the Mariners Weather Log and extrapolation of the tracks since the EPHC stopped issuing advisories on systems before they made landfall. The archives format was significantly changed during 2013 to include non-synoptic best track times, non-developing tropical depressions and wind radii.