Recipe for a Storm — Forecasting a Hurricane Season

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers investigating the ingredients that go into a hurricane think they have found a reliable basis for predicting the overall strength of a hurricane season. Jim Kossin and Dan Vimont have found a basin-wide circulation pattern that offer one possible explanation in the previously unexplained differences in long-term hurricane trends. "Kossin and Vimont, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, noticed that warmer water is just one part of a larger pattern indicating that the conditions are right for more frequent, stronger hurricanes in the Atlantic. The atmosphere reacts to ocean conditions and the ocean reacts to the atmospheric situation, creating a distinct circulation pattern known as the Atlantic Meridional Mode (AMM). The AMM unifies the connections among the factors that influence hurricanes such as ocean temperature, characteristics of the wind, and moisture in the atmosphere."

Every June

[midmopub]

Every June in Florida the local news is full of reports by experts that this year would be the worst hurricane season on record. After 7 years of hearing the same stuff I started to tune it out.

Re:Every June

[Titoxd]

Unfortunately, that is a very real risk associated with long-term hurricane forecasts: Assuming that because there may be a lot of storms, they may devastate an area in particular (something the mass media is particularly good at). A hurricane season can have dozens of storms, and having none affect land. On the other hand, a season may have very few storms but be extremely damaging, like 1992 was [noaa.gov]. It really takes only one bad storm, like Andrew in 1992 [wikipedia.org] or Mitch in 1998 [wikipedia.org], to turn lives around.

In reality, people have to realize that predicting weather is an inherently unstable mathematical problem, so longer-term forecasts are usually not that accurate. On the other hand, short-term forecasts keep getting better [noaa.gov] as the understanding of the physical phenomena increases, along with more computational power to throw at the good old models. A bit of preparation before hurricane season never hurts, though.

Re:Well, yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Were talking about the heisenberg principal here
nature will most likely always be to complex to completely understand or predict.