Project Severe Weather Archive of the Philippines (SWAP). Part 1: Establishing a Baseline Climatology for Severe Weather across the Philippine Archipelago

Abstract

Because of the rudimentary reporting methods and general lack of documentation, the creation of a severe weather database within the Philippines has been difficult yet relevant target for climatology purposes and historical interest. Previous online severe weather documentation i.e. of tornadoes, waterspouts, and hail events, has also often been few, inconsistent, or is now defunct. Many individual countries or continents maintain severe weather information through either government-sponsored or independent organizations. In this case, Project SWAP is intended to be a collaborative exercise, with clear data attribution and open avenues for augmentation, and the creation of a common data model to store the severe weather event information will assist in maintaining and updating the database in the Philippines. For this work, we document the methods necessary for creating the SWAP database, provide broader climatological analysis of spatio-temporal patterns in severe weather occurrence within the Philippine context, and outline potential use cases for the data. We also highlight its key limitations, and emphasize the need for further standardization of such documentation.