December 4th, 2023: The SHIPS Developmental Data sub-page has been updated with new 5-Day files for the AL, CP, and EP basins, each of which now contain data through the 2022 season (5-Day Only). The error found only in the last set of 7-Day files was discovered in the previous batch of 5-Day files (1982-2021). The latest set of 5-Day files for the AL, CP, and EP basins (1982-2022) uploaded today are corrected and now available to download from the Developmental Data sub-page’s “Downloads” section.
October 5th, 2023: The SHIPS Developmental Data sub-page has been updated with new 5-Day data for the WP, IO, and SH basins through the 2021 season. There are no 7-Day files available for the WP, IO, or SH basins (5-Day Only).
October 3rd, 2023: The SHIPS Developmental Dataset files available for download from the Development Data sub-page section containing AL, CP, and EP basin cases from the 1982-2022 seasons have all been replaced with corrected versions which are now available to download from the Developmental Data sub-page without the previously included errors in the Best Track positions, which also affected most of the other predictors. An experimental version with track perturbations was developed to test overfitting in the SHIPS model, but the perturbations were accidentally left in the uploaded files. The “T=0 hrs” were correct, but the later times included the track perturbations, which increased with time. *If the 1982-2002 files were downloaded between June 28, 2023 and October 3, 2023 the files contained the track errors. This now corrected error found in the previous versions of the AL, EP, and CP basins’ data files have NOT been found in any of the WP, IO or SH basins’ data files.
June 28th, 2023: The Developmental Data page has been updated with new SHIPS predictor files through 2022 for the Atlantic, Central Pacific, and Eastern North Pacific basins (7-Day Only).
May 4th, 2022: The Developmental Data page has been updated with new SHIPS predictor files through 2021 for the Atlantic, Central Pacific, and Eastern North Pacific basins.
March 7th, 2022: The Developmental Data page has been updated with new SHIPS predictor files including data through the 2020 seasons for the Atlantic, Central Pacific, Eastern North Pacific, Western North Pacific, Northern Indian Ocean and Southern Hemisphere basins. Additionally, the new 2022 version of the file format and descriptions document has been created and is now available to download as a PDF document on the same Developmental Data sub-page next to the 5-day and 7-day predictor file download links for each basin.
April 1st, 2020: The Developmental Data page has been updated with new SHIPS predictor files through 2019 for the Atlantic, Central Pacific, and Eastern North Pacific basins.
June 27th, 2019: The Developmental Data page has been updated with new SHIPS predictor files through 2017 for the Western North Pacific, Southern Hemisphere, and North Indian Ocean.
December 5th, 2018: The SHIPS Milestones and References sub-pages have been updated. Also, Matthew Onderlinde (NOAA/NCEP/NHC) has been added to the Project Team page.
December 4th, 2018: The Outlier Analysis page has been updated with all of the 2018 season D-SHIPS, LGEM, HWFI, and HMNI model TANIE (Mean Average Error, Bias) graphs for the Atlantic and East Pacific basins.
November 27th, 2018: The Outlier Analysis page has been updated with all of the 2018 season D-SHIPS, LGEM, HWFI, and HMNI model storm-by-storm graphs for the Atlantic and East Pacific basins.
August 20th, 2018: The Outlier Analysis page has been updated with all of the 2017 season HMNI model storm-by-storm graphs for the Atlantic and East Pacific basins.
August 1st, 2018: The Outlier Analysis page has been updated with all of the 2017 season HWFI model storm-by-storm graphs for the Atlantic and East Pacific basins.
July 27th, 2018: The Developmental Data page has been updated with all of the 2017 season cases and new sub-surface predictors from NCODA.
July 26th, 2018: The Outlier Analysis page has been updated with all of the 2017 season D-SHIPS and LGEM storm-by-storm graphs for the Atlantic and East Pacific basins.
November 16th, 2017: The Outlier Analysis page has been updated to include 2017 D-SHIPS, LGEM, and HWFI TANIE graphs for the Atlantic and East Pacific basins.
January 24th, 2017: The Developmental Data page has been updated to include new 2016 SHIPS predictor files for the Atlantic, East Pacific, and Central Pacific basins.
December 20th, 2016: The Outlier Analysis page has been updated to include EP20 (Seymour) in the 2016 East Pacific D-SHIPS and LGEM graphs section.
December 1st, 2016: The Outlier Analysis page has been updated to include AL16 (Otto) in the 2016 Atlantic D-SHIPS and LGEM graphs section.
November 7th, 2016: The Outlier Analysis page has been updated to include 2016 data and D-SHIPS and LGEM graphs for the Atlantic and East Pacific basins.
June 15th, 2016: The 2016 SHIPS predictor file received error corrections.
May 17th, 2016: Data from the Atlantic, East Pacific, and Central Pacific basins for 2015 was added.
November 5th, 2015: Data from the Atlantic, East Pacific, and Central Pacific basins for 2014 was added.
September 11th, 2014: Data from the Atlantic, East Pacific, and Central Pacific basins for 2013 was added.
January 7th, 2014: The Developmental Data sub-page was updated with data from the Southern Hemisphere and the Northern Indian Ocean.
May 10th, 2013: The Central and East Pacific files are now separated. Atlantic, East Pacific, Central Pacific and Western Pacific files were updated and now include data from 2012.
September 4th, 2012: The Western Pacific developmental data file was updated to include data from 2000 to 2011.
Tropical cyclone (TC) track forecast errors have decreased considerably over the past several decades. However, there have only been modest intensity forecast improvements. Because of the complex physical processes affecting intensity changes, statistical forecast models have remained competitive with much more general prediction systems. For this reason the National Hurricane Center (NHC) continues to run a hierarchy of operational intensity models that range from the simple Statistical Hurricane Intensity Prediction Scheme (SHIPS) to the fully-coupled atmosphere-ocean Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast (HWRF) system. Several projects are underway at CIRA and RAMMB to improve SHIPS and related statistical intensity forecast models. This website provides a summary of this work and links to publications and data sets used in this research.
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The original motivation for developing the SHIPS model occurred in 1988 when John Kaplan from the Hurricane Research Division (HRD) participated in a visiting forecaster program at NHC during Hurricane Joan. It quickly became apparent that NHC had limited objective guidance for intensity prediction. Aware of these limitations, John worked with Mark DeMaria (also from HRD at that time) on a new project that led to the development of the Statistical Hurricane Intensity Prediction Scheme (SHIPS). The SHIPS model built on a previous effort at statistical intensity forecasting by Bob Merrill, and combines predictors from climatology, persistence, the atmosphere and ocean to estimate changes in the maximum sustained surface winds of tropical cyclones.
The first real time runs of SHIPS were performed in 1990, and only provided forecasts to 48 hrs at 00 and 12 UTC. The output was available to NHC only in hardcopy format. Beginning in 1991, the digital forecasts were saved the Automated Tropical Cyclone Forecast (ATCF) A-decks, and are available from NHC’s archive at ftp://ftp.nhc.noaa.gov/atcf/archive. The model name in the ATCF is SHIP for the version without land effects (since 1991), DSHP for the version with land effects (since 2000) and LGEM for a related logistic growth equation model (since 2006). For the three year period 1996-1998, the ATCF model name for SHIP was changed to LBAR, which provided the track forecast for SHIPS at that time.
The original SHIPS model was “statistical-synoptic” where no information from large-scale forecast models were used. (all synoptic predictors were from model analyses) The model was converted to a “statistical-dynamical” model in 1997, where predictors were obtained from atmospheric forecast models, in addition to analyses. Table 1 shows a summary of the major milestones in the SHIPS and related models.
Although SHIPS forecasts since about 1997 have shown some skill compared to climatology and persistence forecasts, they have not performed well for rapidly intensifying cases. For this reason, the rapid intensity index (RII) was developed to provide an estimate of the probability of rapid intensification in the next 24 hr. The RII probabilities are provided as part of the SHIPS model text file, and use a subset of the SHIPS predictors most related to rapid intensification in a discriminant analysis algorithm. The SHIPS model provides intensity forecasts for the Atlantic, eastern and central North Pacific. A similar model called the Statistical Typhoon Intensity Prediction Scheme (STIPS) was developed for the western North Pacific, and later for the Indian Ocean and southern hemisphere.
The SHIPS and STIPS models use a linear regression technique, with the impacts of land applied as a correction in a post-processing step. To overcome some of the limitations of this formulation, the Logistic Growth Equation Model (LGEM) was developed. LGEM uses a simple nonlinear differential equation commonly used to model population growth to forecast intensity changes. LGEM is more sensitive to time variations in the predictors, and overcomes some of the limitations of the linear assumptions in the SHIPS model.
LGEM can be run with a much smaller number of predictors than SHIPS. A 2-predictor version is under development that provides a simple phase-space interpretation of the results. Further details are available here.
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Current research involves improving SHIPS, LGEM and RII by better utilizing GOES imagery, new information from satellite-based total precipitable water products, and surface flux estimates. Methods for using the adjoint of the LGEM model to better include persistence are also under development. Lightning data is also being examined for possible use in SHIPS, LGEM and RII. The projects are partially sponsored by the Joint Hurricane Testbed (JHT), GOES-R Risk Reduction Program and Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP).
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Disclaimer: These environmental data and related items of information have not been formally disseminated by NOAA and do not represent and should not be construed to represent any agency determination, view, or policy.
Dataset & Documentation Files Updates:
2023-12-04: The 5-Day Predictor Files for the Atlantic (AL), Central Pacific (CP), and Eastern North Pacific (EP) basins have been updated to include new data for cases up to and including the 2022 season and each file has also been error-corrected, they are now available to download from the Downloads section below (5-Day Only).
2023-10-04: The 5-Day Predictor Files for the Western North Pacific (WP), North Indian Ocean (IO), and Southern Hemisphere (SH) basins have been updated to include data through the 2021 season and they are now available to download from the Downloads section below (5-Day Only).
2023-10-03: The File Format and Predictor Descriptions document has been updated for 2023 and is now available to download as a PDF document from the Downloads section below.
2023-06-29: The Developmental Data page has been updated with new SHIPS predictor files through 2022 for the Atlantic, Central Pacific, and Eastern North Pacific basins (7-Day Only).
2023-06-21: The Developmental Dataset is being updated with data through the 2022 season and will be uploaded to the Developmental Data page of this site and made available to download soon. Only the 7-Day AL, CP, EP data files including 2022 data will be uploaded. No future AL, CP, EP basins’ dataset updates will include any new 5-Day files, beginning with the AL, CP, EP basins’ 2022 dataset updates onward. *UPDATE: The 5-Day data files for all basins will now continue being updated annually and available to retrieve from the “Downloads” section below.
2022-05-04: The Developmental Data page has been updated with new SHIPS predictor files through 2021 for the Atlantic, Central Pacific, and Eastern North Pacific basins. All dataset files have had their extension format changed from “.DAT” to “.TXT”. However the character encoding format of the data in these files did not change and continues to be written in the Unicode UTF-8-BOM standard.
2022-03-07: New 5-day and 7-day SHIPS predictor files have been created for the 2020 seasons of the Atlantic, Central Pacific, and Eastern North Pacific basins and are now available to download from this page. New 5-day SHIPS predictor files for the 2020 seasons of the Western North Pacific, Northern Indian Ocean and Southern Hemisphere basins have been created and are now available to download from this page. The previously experimental data used for the last release’s 2019 season cases have been fully replaced by the finalized Best Track data. The IR satellite predictors for 2019 were also updated using post-processed satellite imagery. A new 2022 version of the file format and descriptions document is now available to download in PDF document format.
2020-04-03: New 7-day SHIPS predictor files are now available for download and include data from 1982-2019 for the Atlantic, Central Pacific, and Eastern North Pacific basins.
2020-04-02: The 2019 Atlantic, Central Pacific, and Eastern North Pacific SHIPS predictor files uploaded yesterday were incomplete and have been replaced by the complete files. The corrected files are now available for download below. Please read the 2019 data disclaimer at the bottom of this page before downloading the new files.
2020-04-01: The Atlantic, Central Pacific, and Eastern North Pacific SHIPS predictor files have been updated through 2019. Please read the 2019 data disclaimer at the bottom of this page before downloading the new files.
2019-06-27: The Western North Pacific, Southern Hemisphere, and North Indian Ocean SHIPS predictor files have been updated through 2017.
2018-07-27: The Atlantic, Eastern North Pacific, and Central Pacific SHIPS predictor files have been updated through 2017.
2017-01-24: The Atlantic, Eastern North Pacific, and Central Pacific SHIPS predictor files have been updated through 2016.
2017-01-20: The 2017 File Format and Predictor Descriptions document has been added.
2017-01-19: 2016 files for the Atlantic, Eastern Pacific and Central Pacific basins have been added.
7-Day SHIPS Predictor File Downloads
Atlantic* 7-day predictor for 1982 to 2022 is available here.
Central Pacific* 7-day predictor for 1982 to 2022 is available here.
Eastern North Pacific* 7-day predictor for 1982 to 2022 is available here.
*NOTICE*: All 7-Day files above this line were last updated: 2023-10-04 at 1900 UTC
5-Day SHIPS Predictor File Downloads
Atlantic* 5-day predictor for 1982 to 2022 is available here.
Central Pacific* 5-day predictor for 1982 to 2022 is available here.
Eastern North Pacific* 5-day predictor for 1982 to 2022 is available here.
Western North Pacific* 5-day predictor for 1990 to 2021 is available here.
North Indian Ocean* 5-day predictor for 1990 to 2021 is available here.
Southern Hemisphere* 5-day predictor for 1998 to 2021 is available here.
*NOTICE*: The AL, CP, EP 5-Day dataset files above this line were last updated: 2023-12-04 at 2300 UTC
File Format and Predictor Descriptions (2023) PDF document is available for download here.
*NOTICE*: This PDF document was last updated: 2023-10-03 at 1900 UTC
*NOTICE*: All download links on this page were last verified as functional on 2023-12-05 at 0100 UTC.
*GENERAL DATA DISCLAIMER: These environmental data and related items of information have not been formally disseminated by NOAA and do not represent and should not be construed to represent any agency determination, view, or policy.
To improve the SHIPS and LGEM models, cases with large forecast cases are being analyzed in greater detail. Cases with both high and low forecast biases are considered. The outlier cases are identified by looking at all forecasts for individual storms.
Another way to identify large errors is to average the intensity errors for all the forecast times out to 120 h for each forecast. Before the errors are averaged, they are normalized by dividing by the error standard deviation for that time period. The resulting average is called the Time Averaged Normalized Intensity Error (TANIE). The error standard deviations used in TANIE are from the NHC official intensity forecasts from 2008-2013 for a combined Atlantic and east Pacific sample. The error standard deviations range from 12 kt at 12 hr to 35 kt at 120 hr. A TANIE value of 1 or greater indicates that the model forecast error was 1 standard deviation above the mean of the NHC official forecast error. The bias associated with the normalized intensity errors is also calculated to identify errors that are systematically too high or low on average throughout the 120 h forecast period.
TANIE Graphs (MAE, Bias)
Storm-by-Storm Forecasts
The following people have made significant contributions to the SHIPS and related model
developments and operational implementations.
NOTE: All contributing staff members and scientists’ names and current institutional affiliations are listed below in alphabetical order by first name.
