Identification

Title

Statistical-dynamical predictions of seasonal North Atlantic hurricane activity

Abstract

Skillfully predicting North Atlantic hurricane activity months in advance is of potential societal significance and a useful test of our understanding of the factors controlling hurricane activity. In this paper, a statistical - dynamical hurricane forecasting system, based on a statistical hurricane model, with explicit uncertainty estimates, and built from a suite of high-resolution global atmospheric dynamical model integrations spanning a broad range of climate states is described. The statistical model uses two climate predictors: the sea surface temperature (SST) in the tropical North Atlantic and SST averaged over the global tropics. The choice of predictors is motivated by physical considerations, as well as the results of high-resolution hurricane modeling and statistical modeling of the observed record. The statistical hurricane model is applied to a suite of initialized dynamical global climate model forecasts of SST to predict North Atlantic hurricane frequency, which peaks during the August - October season, from different starting dates. Retrospective forecasts of the 1982 - 2009 period indicate that skillful predictions can be made from as early as November of the previous year; that is, skillful forecasts for the coming North Atlantic hurricane season could be made as the current one is closing. Based on forecasts initialized between November 2009 and March 2010, the model system predicts that the upcoming 2010 North Atlantic hurricane season will likely be more active than the 1982 - 2009 climatology, with the forecasts initialized in March 2010 predicting an expected hurricane count of eight and a 50% probability of counts between six (the 1966 - 2009 median) and nine.

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document

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code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d74b31xg

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Dataset language

eng

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Classification of spatial data and services

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geoscientificInformation

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title

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reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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date type

publication

effective date

2011-04-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2011 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

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None

Responsible organisations

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contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

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