Microproduct data guideintermediate

NOAA IBTrACS Tropical Cyclones

Global tropical-cyclone best-track positions and intensities for building storm-history maps and seasonal monitors.

Start the guide Open official source

At a glance

Difficulty
Intermediate — some data preparation helps
Size
Small · 0.01–0.2 GB
Formats
CSV, netCDF, Shapefile
Access
Download
API key
Not required
Provider
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information
Updates
Daily
Data terms
IBTrACS open access / NOAA data-use policy

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

IBTrACS merges tropical-cyclone best tracks from WMO regional centers into one archive. Start with the North Atlantic basin CSV rather than the global file. Intensity metrics and storm identifiers are not interchangeable across basins or agencies.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • An internet connection
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Open the IBTrACS product page and choose the North Atlantic CSV.
  2. 2.Read the column documentation, including the units row under the header.
  3. 3.Load a bounded number of rows and keep agency-specific wind fields separate.
Open official source
3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas

import pandas as pd

url = (
    "https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/"
    "international-best-track-archive-for-climate-stewardship-ibtracs/"
    "v04r01/access/csv/ibtracs.NA.list.v04r01.csv"
)
storms = pd.read_csv(url, skiprows=[1], nrows=5000, low_memory=False)
storms["retrieved_at_utc"] = pd.Timestamp.now(tz="UTC")
print(storms[["SID", "NAME", "ISO_TIME", "LAT", "LON", "USA_WIND"]].head(20))
4

Test a useful signal

Map recent North Atlantic storm tracks

Plot a bounded sample of North Atlantic best-track points and identify the named storms included.

  1. 01Skip the units row, load a bounded CSV sample, and confirm storm ID, time, and lat/lon parsed.
  2. 02Map unique storm IDs and summarize the strongest USA_WIND values in the sample.
  3. 03Explain that IBTrACS merges multiple agencies and that wind and pressure metrics are not directly comparable across basins.

Dataset details

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-14. Temporal coverage: 1840s-present with daily provisional tracks.

Theme

Environment & Hazards

Domains

Natural HazardsClimateEmergency Management

Data types

Event DataGeospatialTime Series

Tasks

Hazard MonitoringSpatial AnalysisRisk Mapping

Geography

Global

Formats

CSVnetCDFShapefile

Provider

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information

Data terms

IBTrACS open access / NOAA data-use policy