Identification

Title

QSCAT-R: The QuikSCAT Tropical Cyclone Radial Structure Dataset

Abstract

This document describes the QuikSCAT Tropical Cyclone Radial Structure Dataset (QSCAT-R), including its parameter and file structure as well as the underlying methodology for its construction. QSCAT-R contains data for the radial structure of near-surface wind and rain rate for tropical cyclones globally during the period 1999-2009. The dataset is derived from the corresponding two-dimensional data fields originally estimated from QuikSCAT satellite measurements and optimized for analysis of tropical cyclones within the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) QuikSCAT Tropical Cyclone database. QSCAT-R includes radial profiles of total wind speed and its azimuthal and radial components and corresponding estimates of canonical wind radii, as well as radial profiles of a quantity proportional to rain rate and, when available, collocated SSM/I cloud liquid data. Additionally, data coverage necessarily varies in space and time due to the nature of satellite remote sensing, and thus QSCAT-R provides a parametric measure of data asymmetry to help quantify this form of uncertainty. Overall, as a relatively small dataset (~100 MB) written in a user-friendly NetCDF format, QSCAT-R offers the research community a significant new tool for the analysis of the radial structure of tropical cyclones in nature.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7zs2vxz

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Keyword set

keyword value

Surface winds

Cloud liquid water/ice

Tropical cyclones

Hurricanes

Precipitation rate

originating controlled vocabulary

title

reference date

date type

revision

effective date

2021-09-17

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2014-12-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-07-12T00:03:45.306301

Metadata language