CYCLOPS: Tropical Cyclone Operational Prediction System

Offshore operators in tropical basins have special requirements for evacuation of personnel, orderly shutdown of operations and other activities when faced with a tropical cyclone threat.

Administrators faced with evacuation decisions need two critical pieces of data: (1) what are the expected conditions at the site for the forecasted track/intensity and (2) how bad could the conditions get when faced with a direct strike. The answers to these questions ultimately drive the decision making process and are exactly the kinds of questions CYCLOPS was designed to answer.

National warning centers such as the Tropical Prediction Center and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center routinely provide track and intensity forecasts of tropical systems. Oceanweather uses these parameters to drive its own tropical model and to produce high-resolution wind and wave forecasts. Then, the known characteristics of the track forecast errors are used to develop an envelope of solutions that represent the 90% probabilistic track error. The result is a simple-to-read table and graph that represent the current forecast track and 90% exceedence values of winds and waves at a location.

CYCLOPS service is available for any tropical basin worldwide.