CLIQR web-based interface Created by Kyle Griffin Instructions Last Updated 07/13/2021 Contact: Harrison.Tran@noaa.gov, David.Roth@noaa.gov, Mark.Klein@noaa.gov for further questions or if there are issues with the output ************************************************************************************************************************** WEB-NOTE: Currently, the web output is extremely simple and is subject to change. No claim is made that this data will be timely or accurate, however, the system is set up that no data should ever be more than nine hours old. ************************************************************************************************************************** DESCRIPTION ----------- CLIQR (CLimatology-based Quantitative Rainfall) is a tool that allows its users to identify possible tropical and subtropical cyclones with similar characteristics to either a user-defined set of initial data or current and forecast parameters for active systems. Similar storms are identified with rainfall in mind, such that similarities in storm size and motion are weighted more heavily than similarities in strength. The program takes these results, ranked in in order of best match, and enable display of their associated rainfall graphics that have been creatd from the Tropical Cyclone Rainfall Climatology project. The database currently contains all of the best track points from both the Atlantic HURDAT (dating back through 1851) and the Eastern Pacific (dating back through 1949). Not all of this data is complete, however, as data for the heavily-weighted size (measured by the ROCI) criteria is present in the majority of systems back into the 1950s. In the Eastern Pacific, this data is only available back through the 2001 season at present time. Because of this data "void," some older storms might not match as well as they potentially could. Work is underway to expand the availability of this data by using past scanned North American and Northern Hemisphere surface analyses from HPC/NMC, Tropical Strip maps from NHC and NMC, as well as other published sources. HOW TO USE ---------- The webuser can either select a storm from a list of systems that the NHC is issuing guidance upon. If the active system does not have forecast information, then the CLIQR search algorithm runs only searches for potentially analogous systems around the singular point described by the input data. This will capture any system that, at one point in their life cycles, were similar to the set of initial data. If an active system is selected and forecast information is available, then the CLIQR search algorithm runs for each point in the forecast track and aggregates the matches across the entire forecast track. The first few rows of the output describe the current storm information as ingested by the CLIQR system. This information is followed by a list of similar points within the extended best track database. For singular-point searches, the output simply shows a list of all similar points ranked by their similarity. For searches using forecast tracks, the output groups matches by storm. Each storm contains points within the extended best track database that best matched the forecast parameters at each forecast hour. A single point may appear as a match multiple times: this is simply a signal that either the input storm or historical analog was slow-moving. Each matching point is awarded a score based on its similarity to the input data. For matches based on forecast tracks, the closest matching analogs are scored based on the aggregate of the analog's closest matching points at each forecast hour. A perfect matching point in the database will have a score just over nine (9), but the relative scores between the matching points should be treated with greater importance than the magnitude of the scores themselves. For example, analog scores for active systems with forecast points out to 120 hours/5 days will tend to be higher than analog scores for active systems near dissipation because CLIQR aggregates analogs at each forecast point such that storms with similar tracks emerge as stronger analogs. For each system, only the matching storms on the list with graphics created as part of the Tropical Cyclone Rainfall Climatology project will be displayed, so in most cases the number of available graphics will be less than the number of potentially analogous systems. NOTE: There are multiple reasons for a storm not displaying a rainfall graphic, the most likely of which is that the storm has not been reached yet in the Climatology database. This will be true of most storms before 1956, although a select few exist back to 1921. If a storm since 1956 does not display a graphic, then chances are that it did not produce much, if any, rainfall in an area with accessible rainfall data - hence all storms that do not near landfall under this category. A third, slimmer possibility exists that the link to the rainfall graphic is broken. If you happen across a storm where you think this is the case, please let us know.