DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17347239
title: Announcement: Milestones and the 4th Data Release of Project SWAP (SWAP DR4)

description: I am thrilled to announce four significant milestones for Project SWAP (Severe Weather Archive of the Philippines):





Manuscripts published in Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences (APJAS):I'm excited to share that our recent research papers have been published in Springer Nature’s Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences (APJAS)! These studies focus on hailstorm events in the Philippines, offering new insights into the dynamics and impacts of these intense weather phenomena. Please kindly see the following/respective DOI links. 

Ibañez, M.P.A., Manalo, J.A., Capuli, G.H., Olaguera, L.M.P. (2025). Spatiotemporal Analysis of Hail Events in the Philippines. Asia-Pac J Atmos Sci 61, 24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13143-025-00409-4Capuli, G.H. (2025). Friday the 13th Hailstorm in the Province of Bulacan, Philippines (13 August 2021): A Case Study. Asia-Pac J Atmos Sci 61, 13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13143-025-00396-6Meanwhile, our case study on the 27 May 2024 Tornadic Supercell in Pampanga Province is currently under peer review in Springer Nature’s Natural Hazards. I'm looking forward to sharing more about this severe weather event once the review process is complete. You may read this, as a preprint, through: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2504.20559




Integration of Tornado and Waterspout data in the Tornado Archive (TA):I'm pleased to share that tornado and waterspout data from Project SWAP (particularly the SWAP DR3) have now been officially integrated into the Tornado Archive (TA; Maas et al. 2024) marking the first time that severe weather events from the Philippines have been globally imported and visualized through this platform.You can visit the Blog/Update regarding the addition of the Philippine severe weather data to the TA platform through this link. Meanwhile, you can also visit the interactive visualization tool provided by TA through their Data Explorer.Maas, M., Supinie, T., Berrington, A., Emmerson, S., Aidala, A., & Gavan, M. (2024). The Tornado Archive: Compiling and Visualizing a Worldwide, Digitized Tornado Database. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 105(7), E1137-E1152. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-23-0123.1




2nd Part of Project SWAP:

I’m thrilled to share that the second part of our Project SWAP (Severe Weather Archive of the Philippines) is now available as a preprint! The article establishes the baseline climatology of severe weather events across Luzon, with a particular focus on the convective environments associated with hail-bearing severe storms. 

This provides a clearer picture of the atmospheric conditions that favor hail development in the Philippines. The manuscript is currently under peer review, but the preprint is now accessible for reading to anyone interested.

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.09530




Towards the 4th Data Release of SWAP (SWAP DR4):As the 2025 severe weather season across the Philippine archipelago gradually winds down (based on insights from the Project SWAP Part 1 article), preparations are now underway for the fourth data release of the Severe Weather Archive of the Philippines (SWAP DR4) - slated for release in the first quarter of 2026 (next year). You may see the discussion of this update in the next Philippine Meteorological Society Annual Conference.SWAP DR4 will highlight and document severe convective events observed throughout 2025, continuing our effort to build a comprehensive archive of hailstorms, tornadoes, and waterspouts across the country.For the upcoming release, SWAP DR4 will include several significant updates and improvements:







Expanded documentation, now approaching 1,500 recorded severe weather events across the Philippines.




Enhanced geographic accuracy, with refined latitude–longitude coordinates for all entries.




Increased reliability, as many events are now supported by multiple independent information sources. 




Improved metadata documentation, with additional “indicators” for accuracy and reliability included in the accompanying PDF files.




Integration of proximity rawinsonde observations (RAOBs), in line with our previous commitment, SWAP DR4 will feature more (if not all) proximity soundings associated with each event, analyzed using SounderPy of Gillett (2025). Apologies for the delay. 



As indicated, this project can be important to uncovering the Philippine's thermodynamic and kinematic environment on various timescales, essentially creating a baseline climatology to further understand both convective processes and long term climate linkages. However, any analyses using this archive will require careful consideration of biases therein, many of which we have discussed in the journal article (as also described).

Kindly see the attached table I created in this announcement for the versions of Project SWAP and other details. For now, SWAP DR3 will be good to use and is imported/carried to this announcement. If you have comments, kindly use the SWAP Contact Form below. 






Indexing number of Versions



Description



w/ Zenodo DOI?



Is it citable? 





Version 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and so on...



Major Data Release/Major Update



Yes



Yes*





Version 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and so on...



Incremental Update/Patch



Yes



Yes*





Version x.x.1, x.x.2, x.x.3, and so on...



Announcement



Yes



No





*Note: You can just cite all the versions for your ease. See the Additional Description. 
description: No. of Severe Weather Events: 1094*






Before 2010



2010



2011



2012



2013



2014



2015



2016



2017



2018



2019



2020



2021



2022



2023



2024



2025





77



7



19



22



39



38



36



34

49
51
53
104


82



102



68



287



26**





*As of October 06, 2025. Past years/events/cases, including their supporting evidences, remains difficult to scour/dig around. **As of March 17, 2025 since that is the beginning of the severe weather season.

If you use this dataset/archive, kindly cite either of the following;

Capuli, G. H. (2024). Project Severe Weather Archive of the Philippines (SWAP). Part 1: Establishing a Baseline Climatology for Severe Weather across the Philippine Archipelago. Annals of Geophysics, 67, p. GC554. https://doi.org/10.4401/ag-9151

or

Capuli, G. H. (2024). Project Severe Weather Archive of the Philippines (SWAP). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11236890

You can contact me through this form: SWAP Contact Form or through the email.