254
2, FEBRUARY 2015
Automatic Tracking of Pregenesis Tropical
Disturbances Within the Deviation
Angle Variance System
Oscar G. Rodríguez-Herrera, Kimberly M. Wood, Klaus P. Dolling, Wiley T. Black,
Elizabeth A. Ritchie, and J. Scott Tyo, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—The deviation angle variance (DAV) method is an
objective tool for estimating the intensity of tropical cyclones (TCs)
using geostationary infrared (IR) brightness temperature data.
At early stages in TC development, the DAV signal can be also
a robust predictor of tropical cyclogenesis. However, one of the
problems with using the DAV method at these early stages is
that the operator has to subjectively track potentially developing
cloud systems, sometimes before they are clearly identifiable. Here,
we present a method that allows us to automatically track the
evolution of cloud clusters using only the raw IR imagery and
the resulting DAV maps. We have compared our objective method
with results manually obtained on a limited data set spanning a
12-day period during the 2010 hurricane season in the western
North Pacific and tuned the performance of the method to the
manual results. The performance of the method was then tested
by comparing the results with best track and invest files produced
by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center for the four-year period
2009–2012. The long-term results agree well with the best track
and invest files for the disturbances analyzed in terms of start
time, end time, and locations of disturbances. The automatic
tracking method presented in this letter may be used to reduce the
dependence of tropical cyclogenesis DAV analyses on the expertise
and ability of the operator.
Index Terms—Automatic storm tracking, deviation angle vari-
ance (DAV), remote sensing.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A tropical cyclone (TC) can be defined as a warm-core non-
frontal synoptic-scale cyclone originating over tropical or
subtropical waters, with organized deep convection and a closed
surface wind circulation about a well-defined center (http://
www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutgloss.shtml#t). Because these intense
convective systems form in regions where it is challenging
to obtain direct measurements, satellite-based methods have
Manuscript received July 24, 2013; revised May 23, 2014; accepted
June 18, 2014. Date of publication July 21, 2014; date of current version August
21, 2014. This work was supported in part by the National Oceanographic
Partnership Program under Grant N00014-10-1-0146 and in part by the Office
of Naval Research Marine Meteorology Program under Grant N00014-13-1-
0365.
O. G. Rodríguez-Herrera, W. T. Black, and J. S. Tyo are with the College
of Optical Sciences, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719 USA
(e-mail: orh@optics.arizona.edu; wblack@optics.arizona.edu; tyo@optics.
arizona.edu).
K. M. Wood, K. P. Dolling, and E. A. Ritchie are with the Department
of Atmospheric Sciences, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721
USA (e-mail: wood@atmo.arizona.edu; dolling@atmo.arizona.edu; ritchie@
atmo.arizona.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LGRS.2014.2334561
1545-598X © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING LETTERS, VOL. 12, NO.
been developed to monitor their progress. The deviation angle
variance (DAV) technique was introduced by Piñeros et al. as an
objective method to estimate the intensity of a TC from infrared
(IR) satellite imagery [1]–[4]. First, the gradient of IR bright-
ness temperatures in the satellite image is computed at every
pixel within a given distance from a selected point that is being
assessed as a potential center of circulation of a developing or a
mature TC. Next, the angular deviation between the computed
gradient and a radial from the selected center is calculated
for every pixel. The variance of this angle within the same
radius—the deviation angle variance or DAV—is computed to
obtain a single quantity that characterizes the symmetry of the
TC for the selected center. DAV values are negatively correlated
with TC intensity. Thus, by using a training set of historical
TCs, a parametric curve can be calculated that directly relates
the DAV to TC intensity for a particular basin that can be then
used to estimate the intensity of current TCs [2], [3]. The DAV
methodology is discussed in detail elsewhere [1]–[4].
The DAV method has been also extended to assist in iden-
tifying tropical cyclogenesis [5]. For this latter application, a
map of DAV values is created using every pixel in the satellite
image, one at a time, as the center for the calculation and
then plotting the DAV value at that pixel’s location in the
resulting map. The map is then analyzed to find regions with
DAV values below a predetermined threshold, which indicate
regions of high symmetry where a TC may be developing. The
application of this method to the North Atlantic [3] basin has
produced excellent results with median TC detection times just
before (0.6–3 h) the first indication of a tropical depression
(TD) in the National Hurricane Center’s retrospective best track
archives [5].
To enable the transition of the DAV method to a real-time
operational forecast environment, it is necessary to keep track
of potentially developing cloud clusters in IR satellite images
between synoptic times when the operational fixes are not
available. Objective methods such as centroid locations and
location of minimum DAV may be used to obtain a center fix
estimate for a given cloud cluster in an IR image. Unfortunately,
these objective methods have not proven to provide a robust
way to keep track of a given disturbance, particularly early in
its development [6].
Automatic storm tracking methods found in the literature
may be divided into three categories: methods based on pat-
tern recognition [7], [8], cross correlation [8]–[11], and shape
analysis [12]–[14]. In this letter, we present a shape-analysis-
based objective automatic tracking method that uses the DAV
information to track the position and evolution of potentially
RODRÍGUEZ-HERRERA et al.: TRACKING OF PREGENESIS TROPICAL DISTURBANCES WITHIN THE DAV SYSTEM 255

developing cloud clusters within the DAV system. This method

provides the framework for transforming the DAV technique
into a fully automated real-time forecaster aid for identifying
tropical cyclogenesis. The main objective of the work presented
herein is to keep track of potentially developing cloud clusters
and create a DAV cloud cluster evolution history before the
actual genesis of a TC, simplifying the use of the method in
operational centers.

II. DATA AND AUTOMATIC S TORM

T RACKING M ETHODOLOGY
This study focuses on western North Pacific TCs during
the four-year period 2009–2012. The data are derived from
longwave (10.7 μm) IR satellite imagery from the Japanese
Multifunctional Transport Satellite (MTSAT) of the western
North Pacific basin. The images are resampled to a spatial
resolution of 10 km per pixel and encompass an area from
0◦ to 40◦ N and from 100◦ to 180◦ E. This study consists
of a total of 19 558 unique hourly images over the four-year
period and includes 82 developing systems and 194 nonde-
veloping systems that were labeled as invests by the JTWC
but never achieved TC intensity. The results of the tracking
technique are compared against the JTWC best track database,
which can be obtained from http://www.usno.navy.mil/NOOC/
nmfc-ph/RSS/jtwc/best_tracks/ and the JTWC invest database
(M. Kucas, personal communication).
The objective DAV system automatically identifies locations
that meet user-defined thresholds as potential TCs. The operator
must then decide if a given detection belongs to a new potential
storm or if it is part of a previously identified storm that the
operator is already tracking. This part of the DAV analysis was
previously manually accomplished, was subjective, and placed
an additional burden on the operator, who was already work-
ing in a time-constrained environment. The tracking system
relieves the analyst from having to manually track pregenesis
disturbances, allowing the analysis of the current state of evo-
lution of a disturbance without having to analyze previous IR
imagery.
The tracking method presented herein uses information from
two fields: the brightness temperature IR satellite image and
its corresponding DAV map. Fig. 1 shows a flowchart with
the main steps in the method. The satellite IR images used
in this analysis were converted to an 8-bit digital format to
facilitate the computation of the DAV maps. Using this set of
data, the tracking system first looks for regions on the DAV
map with a variance below a given threshold THmax . The
choice of THmax was obtained from the receiver operating char-
acteristic (ROC) curve computed in [4], which plots positive
detection of pregenesis cloud clusters versus a false-alarm rate
for particular DAV values. According to those results, a value
of THmax = 2000 deg2 identifies 100% of the cloud clusters
that might develop into TCs, albeit with high false alarm rates.
Next, the tracking system locates pixels with locally minimum
DAV values and compares those pixels to the corresponding
IR image to verify that clouds likely associated with a weather
disturbance of interest are present. This step is necessary as the
DAV map solely contains symmetry information and can find
high symmetry in clear sky regions. The automatic tracking
system defines a cloud cluster by computing the average bright-
Fig. 1. Flowchart with the main steps of the objective automatic tracking
method. Details on a number of validations have been omitted to simplify the
chart. The dashed rectangles enclose the detections that are labeled as either
ghost, positive, or true detections.
ness temperature within a region with radius Rcloud centered
on the minimum DAV point and compares it with a user-
defined threshold THBmin . THBmin was chosen to be the 8-bit
equivalent of 273.15 K (∼147) as obtained from the MTSAT-2
calibration table [15]. The typical radius of a TC as reported
in various studies (e.g., [16]) was used as the value of Rcloud
(250 km). Although TCs vary considerably in size, Rcloud
need only encompass the main cloudy region associated with
the TC. Regions with a minimum DAV below THmax and
an average brightness temperature greater than THBmin are
labeled as detections, assigned a number, and included in a list
that contains the minimum DAV, the latitude and longitude of
the point, and the detection time.
If either of the two thresholds is not reached, the point
of minimum DAV is labeled as a ghost detection, and the
automatic tracking system checks the detections table for a
previous detection within radius Rtrack of the ghost detection
within a time period Ttrack . Rtrack = 500 km is consistent
with the distance a cloud cluster would have propagated on
average within the time Ttrack (initially set to 24 h). Ghost
detections are used to follow cloud clusters that are of interest
in the event that no actual detection is found over an extended
period of time Ttrack . If no previous detection satisfying both
conditions is found in the detections table, the ghost detection
is discarded. Otherwise, the tracking system upgrades the ghost
to a full detection and includes the cluster information for that
256 IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING LETTERS, VOL. 12, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2015
Fig. 2. (Color online) Snapshot of the automatic tracking system with two
dissipating TCs that were previously tracked and six identified cloud clus-
ters being tracked in the western North Pacific basin on August 31, 2010,
at 2132 UTC.
time in the detections table. This is an important step because
a cloud cluster being tracked often loses symmetry during its
early evolution, but later reorganizes and continues developing.
If either no detection associated with a previous detection is
found within a time period Ttrack or the average brightness
temperature falls below THBmin , the cloud cluster is considered
to have dissipated. Any new detection in the vicinity is labeled
as a new cloud cluster and tracked as described above.
The THmax DAV value used to identify detections produces
realistic TC durations in comparison with those reported in the
best track database. However, using this value as the threshold
for true detections, i.e., cloud clusters that have the potential to
develop into TCs, produces a large number of false positives
[5]. Therefore, a lower DAV value, i.e., THtrue , is used to filter
out false detections and generate a second table that contains
the corresponding cluster information. The value THtrue =
1750 deg2 was chosen for this study from the ROC curve in
[4] because it yielded a true positive rate greater than 95%
with a false positive rate (FPR) of less than 25% in the earlier
work. In addition, this value yields a median time of detection
approximately equal to the designation of a TC as a TD in
the best track archive in both the North Atlantic [3] and the
western North Pacific [4]. A strategy to further reduce the FPR
was implemented in the tracking system using the cumulative
time that a potentially developing storm spends below THtrue .
The minimum cumulative time to consider a cloud cluster as
an actual true positive, i.e., Ttrue , was chosen to be a full
diurnal cycle. Furthermore, a land mask was applied to initial
detections, since cloud clusters originating over land rarely
develop into TCs. However, subsequent detections over land of
an already identified cloud cluster of interest are retained. The
combination of these two criteria resulted in no false positives
detected in this analysis. In real-time genesis analyses, the value
of Ttrue can be reduced to only a few hours (e.g., 3–5 h) in order
to avoid delaying the detection time by a full diurnal cycle.
However, the reduction in the detection time delay comes at
the expense of a higher FPR.
Fig. 2 shows a snapshot of the automatic tracking system
with six identified cloud clusters being tracked and two dis-
sipating TCs that are still being tracked. The circles in the
image are centered on the current detections and color-coded to
distinguish between new detections (blue), previously identified
detections (green), and track detections (yellow). The eight sets
of dots represent the current and previous locations of each
cloud cluster with a time latency Ttrack . Different colors have
been used to mark each identified cloud cluster. The size of each
is a function of the DAV value for each detection: large dots
correspond to low DAV values, and small dots correspond to
high DAV values. Two TCs shown in Fig. 2, namely, Lionrock
(19.4◦ N, 118.1◦ E, current intensity = 50 kt, dark brown dots)
and Kompasu (28.4◦ N, 126.6◦ E, current intensity = 103 kt,
light brown dots), were included in the 2010 best track database
from the JTWC.1
III. P ERFORMANCE OF THE M ETHOD
The automatic tracking method was tuned by comparing
with consensus results manually obtained from a subjective
blind test by two operators. Each operator analyzed a set of
262 hourly IR brightness temperature images of the western
North Pacific basin between August 25, 2010, at 0032 UTC and
September 5, 2010, at 2332 UTC. A total of 26 nonconsecutive
hourly IR images was missing from the data set. The operators
in this case were postdoctoral researchers in our group with ex-
tensive experience in TC analysis. Cloud clusters were tracked,
and the location and minimum DAV values were recorded. Be-
cause there were minor differences between the resulting anal-
yses, a subjective consensus between the operators was formed.
The results from the subjective consensus were compared with
the results from the automatic system, and some parameters
(THmax , THtrue , Rcloud , THBmin , Rtrack , and Ttrack ) were
calibrated to ensure that the automatic results match the manual
results within a radius of 5◦ and a time of detection of 6 h. The
majority of parameters had little or no effect on the performance
of the method when varied by less than 10% of their initial
value. The only exception was THBmin , for which a small
variation enabled a better match with the subjective results. The
adopted value of THBmin is 145.
Table I shows the start and finish dates/times reported by
the automatic tracking using the THmax threshold. The time
difference Δτ1 is the duration of the storm from the first time
that the DAV value falls below THmax until the last time that it
is below that value. The differential Δτ2 is the time difference
between the first and last times that the DAV falls below THtrue ,
i.e., the duration obtained by the automatic tracking system that
corresponds to the duration reported by the manual test. The
comparison between the automatic tracking and the manual test
reported latitude, longitude, start time, and finish time showed
that these were exactly the same for most storms, with the
exception of the finish time reported for cloud clusters 2 and
3 discussed below. The perfect agreement between the latitude
and longitude of the cloud clusters is to be expected, since they
correspond to those of the point with minimum DAV within a
circular region of radius Rtrack . The differential Δτ12 is the
time difference between the first time that the DAV value falls
below THmax and the first time that it falls below THtrue . The
TC names reported in the table are the names assigned to true
positives by the JTWC.
All of the manually detected cloud clusters have a cor-
responding cloud cluster detected by the automatic tracking
system. The assigned numbers do not coincide between the
1 This letter has supplementary downloadable material available at http://
ieeexplore.ieee.org, provided by the authors. This includes a README file and
a movie file showing the performance of the tracking system for the western
North Pacific basin between August 25, 2010, at 0032 UTC and September 5,
2010, at 2332 UTC. This material is 7 MB in size.
RODRÍGUEZ-HERRERA et al.: TRACKING OF PREGENESIS TROPICAL DISTURBANCES WITHIN THE DAV SYSTEM
TABLE I
L IST OF T RUE P OSITIVE D ETECTIONS O BTAINED F ROM THE B LIND T EST A FTER C ONSENSUS AND THE O BJECTIVE AUTOMATIC T RACKING S YSTEM .
T HE S TORM N UMBERS L ISTED IN E ACH C OLUMN C ORRESPOND TO THE N UMBERS A SSIGNED BY E ITHER THE
M ANUAL T RACKING OR THE AUTOMATIC T RACKING S YSTEM
TABLE II
C OMPARISON B ETWEEN THE S TART AND F INISH DATES /T IMES OF THE
T RUE P OSITIVE D ETECTIONS O BTAINED F ROM THE B LIND T EST A FTER
C ONSENSUS AND THE O BJECTIVE AUTOMATIC T RACKING S YSTEM
manual and automatic tracking, except for the first part of
the first cloud cluster and the second cloud cluster, because
the total number of cloud clusters detected in each case is
different. In most cases, the start and finish dates/times used
to compute Δτ2 coincide perfectly between the manual and
automatic tracking, as shown in Table II. Two exceptions are
cloud clusters 2 and 3 (Lionrock and Kompasu, respectively)
from the automatic tracking system, which detected the last
time the DAV value was below THtrue up to 17 h after the end
of the cloud cluster recorded on the manual test. This shows the
high sensitivity of the automatic system to track even vanishing
cloud clusters. Furthermore, cloud cluster 2 on the automatic
results was identified by the automatic tracking system as a
potentially developing TC 6 h in advance of the manual test
(see Table II).
An important issue observed in the results of the automatic
tracking is the split of the storm labeled by the system as cloud
cluster 1, which was identified on the manual test as cloud
clusters 1, 3, and 5. This tracking mismatch is due to the com-
plexity of the cloud cluster that developed into TS Namtheun.
Its average brightness temperature falls just below THBmin and
its DAV value rises just above THmax at intermediate stages
of its development. This is a tricky case that was difficult to iden-
tify as a single cloud cluster on the test because that particular
cloud cluster was surrounded by other complex cloud clusters
that later developed into TS Lionrock and Typhoon Kompasu.
IV. P ERFORMANCE IN L ONG -T ERM T RACKING
Once the automatic tracking system was tuned to produce
results comparable with the manual analysis for the 12-day
period, the performance was tested using four years of best
track and invest data from the JTWC in the western North
Pacific encompassing 2009–2012. The test was limited to 52%
of the disturbances in the JTWC archives because of the lack
of availability of some IR imagery in our database. The miss-
ing intervals were randomly distributed through the four-year
period and did not introduce any temporal bias into the test.
Other basins were not included in this study. Nevertheless,
due to the high complexity of the disturbances in the western
North Pacific, we expect the results obtained in this basin to be
257
TABLE III
N UMBER OF D EVELOPING AND N ONDEVELOPING D ISTURBANCES
R EPORTED BY THE JTWC AND D ETECTED BY THE O BJECTIVE
AUTOMATIC T RACKING M ETHOD D URING E ACH S EASON OF THE
F OUR -Y EAR P ERIOD 2009–2012
representative of the performance of our method. The numbers
of disturbances reported by the JTWC and our tracking method,
including best track and invests, for which enough IR imagery
is available in our archive to enable the tracking analysis are
shown in Table III. Most TCs in the best track archive for which
we have data available were detected and successfully tracked
by the tracking system, with a maximum location difference
between best track entries and tracking system detections of 5◦
in latitude and longitude within a time difference of 6 h, i.e., the
time intervals at which the best track and invests are recorded.
The TCs that the system missed either did not meet the THtrue
threshold or met it for a time shorter than Ttrue . That is, the
missing TCs were not identified as true positives. The system
achieved a correct detection rate of 91.4%, which is close to the
rate of 95% for the same threshold reported in [4] during the
development of the genesis predictor. The mean durations of
automatic tracking for developed TCs and the detected invests
that matched JTWC invests were 1.27 and 0.93, respectively,
when normalized by the duration recorded in the best track and
invest databases, meaning that, on average, the system tracked
true TCs for longer than the JTWC and tracked nondeveloping
systems for a slightly shorter time period. The standard devi-
ation for the entire population was ∼1.2. The tracking system
identified the disturbances an average 26 h before they were
designated as TD in the best track. In the case of invests, most
disturbances for which we have data available were success-
fully identified and tracked by the automatic system. The rest
of them were very weak and did not produce a DAV signal
low enough to reach the THmax threshold. This property of the
automatic tracking method can be used to discriminate invests
with potential to develop from those that are highly unlikely
to develop. A number of disturbances detected by the tracking
method using the THmax threshold do not have a counterpart in
the invest archive, but do not reach the THtrue threshold or do
it for a period shorter than Ttrue . Overall, the system identifies
many more clusters that cross the THmax threshold, but the vast
majority of these are automatically discarded.
Approximately 30% of the disturbances in the JTWC’s best
track and invest files were detected as two or three differ-
ent disturbances by the automatic tracking system. We have
258 IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING LETTERS, VOL. 12, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2015
identified three classes of disturbances that present this issue.
The first class is composed of disturbances that form in the
South China Sea. These disturbances often have large cloud
bands far from, yet associated with, the central circulation.
However, the automated tracking system has difficulty con-
necting them, and the close proximity of land complicates
the process. The second class is constituted by systems that
undergo extratropical transition. Because these systems rapidly
accelerate, they require different internal settings of Rtrack and
Ttrack than the main set of cases and are beyond the scope
of this work. Finally, the third class is constituted by invests
with low-level circulation centers but little deep convection or
high cirrus shields that are tracked by the JTWC using visible
imagery. Because the automated tracking system utilizes only
IR imagery, such systems are currently problematic.
Because of the large amount of data produced for the four-
year comparison between the objective automatic tracking
method and JTWC’s tracking files, it is impractical to present
the results of the comparison in this letter. However, the data
set is available at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org as single-year tables
with a side-by-side comparison of the detection date, time, and
location recorded in the best track or invest files with those
reported by the objective automatic tracking method for each
disturbance identified by the latter. In general, the coincidence
between the JTWC’s tracking files and the results of the auto-
matic tracking method is extremely close, although not perfect.
One issue we particularly noted during the four-year test was
that, in the event of a temporary satellite shutdown, or other
reason for loss of images, human intervention is necessary to
realign the tracked cloud clusters.
V. D ISCUSSION AND C ONCLUSION
An automated cloud cluster tracking system based on the
DAV has been presented, which is designed to ease the burden
of keeping track of pregenesis disturbances identified by the
DAV system. The method provides an objective estimation
of the location of a cloud cluster that can be used to create
a pregenesis history of both developing and nondeveloping
storms. This history may be used to identify features of devel-
oping tropical disturbances during their early stages of devel-
opment and separate them from cloud clusters that are clearly
nondeveloping.
To demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique, first, a
12-day comparison with a manual analysis was used to tune the
automatic technique. After tuning, the technique was compared
with four years of invest and best track data from the JTWC
in the western North Pacific. The results presented in this letter
show that the objective automatic tracking method is capable
of tracking cloud clusters in the western North Pacific, and its
results are in good agreement with the JTWC best track and
invest databases using a four-year period of comparison.
Although this is a limited sized data set, preliminary work in
other basins does appear to corroborate the findings presented
here. While the automatic tracking system has been designed to
work with the DAV genesis technique [5], it can be also used
to initially locate all existing cloud clusters, filter them for only
those cloud clusters with potential to continue developing, and
report those filtered cloud clusters continuously to a database,
relieving the forecaster of considerable manual work. Current
and future work include the following: 1) testing the automatic
tracking technique in the eastern North Pacific basin in con-
junction with the genesis DAV technique; 2) further improve
the technique for those identified cases where the technique
does not perform well; and 3) using the built-in capabilities of
the automated system to develop the probabilistic genesis DAV
technique.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the JTWC for providing the
satellite imagery and invest files used in this study. The best
track data were obtained from the JTWC’s public website.
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