A Reanalysis-Based Global Tropical Cyclone Tracks Dataset for the Twentieth Century (RGTracks-20C)

Abstract. Tropical cyclones (TCs) are among the deadliest disasters affecting human society, and their response to climate change has widely drawn attention from the public. However, assessing how historical TC activity changed with climate change has proven challenging due to incomplete TC records in the early years. Here, we introduce the Reanalysis-Based Global Tropical Cyclone Tracks Dataset for the Twentieth Century (RGTracks-20C) (Ye et al., 2024), a publicly available century- long global TC track dataset spanning from 1850–2014. The RGTracks-20C is reconstructed from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Twentieth Century Reanalysis using two independent TC tracking algorithms. Validation based on observations confirms that the RGTracks- 20C effectively captures the climatology and long-term variability of TC numbers, tracks, duration, and intensity across various ocean basins. A remarkable key strength of the RGTracks-20C is its ability to fill the missing intensity and location records of TCs observed in early years. This dataset serves as a valuable historical data reference for future research on climate change and TC-related disasters.