The last (and my favorite) of the major hurricane seasonal forecasts came out yesterday. Phil Klotzbach and Bill Gray from Colorado State are sticking with their April forecast. Rather anti-climactic, but perhaps it’s a measure of the confidence in the forecast. I didn’t have a chance to write up something in April, so I’ll do it now before normalcy, if it sets in, brings six weeks of inactivity.
http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts is used in most of the following. My comments are in italics.
EXTENDED RANGE FORECAST OF ATLANTIC SEASONAL HURRICANE ACTIVITY AND LANDFALL STRIKE PROBABILITY FOR 2011
We continue to foresee well above-average activity for the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season. We are predicting the same levels of activity that were forecast in early April due to the combination of expected neutral ENSO conditions and very favorable atmospheric and oceanic conditions in the tropical Atlantic. We continue to anticipate an above-average probability of United States and Caribbean major hurricane landfall.
Note – in the table below, I changed K&G’s June numbers to the range that include ±1 standard deviation of their hindcast error and added a column with NOAA’s forecast.
| Forecast Parameter and 1950-2000
Climatology (in parentheses) |
Issue Date
8 December 2010 |
Issue Date
6 April 2011 |
Issue Date
1 June 2011 |
NOAA |
| Named Storms (NS) (9.6) | 17 | 16 | 12.3 – 19.7 | 12-18 |
| Named Storm Days (NSD) (49.1) | 85 | 80 | 59.9 – 101.1 | |
| Hurricanes (H) (5.9) | 9 | 9 | 6.9 – 11.1 | 6-10 |
| Hurricane Days (HD) (24.5) | 40 | 35 | 24.8 – 45.2 | |
| Major Hurricanes (MH) (2.3) | 5 | 5 | 3.4 – 6.6 | 3-6 |
| Major Hurricane Days (MHD) (5.0) | 10 | 10 | 4.7 – 15.3 | |
| Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) (96.1) | 165 | 160 | 112 – 212 | |
| Net Tropical Cyclone Activity (NTC) (100%) | 180 | 175 | 127 – 223 |
PROBABILITIES FOR AT LEAST ONE MAJOR (CATEGORY 3-4-5) HURRICANE LANDFALL ON EACH OF THE FOLLOWING COASTAL AREAS:
- Entire U.S. coastline – 72% (average for last century is 52%)
- U.S. East Coast Including Peninsula Florida – 48% (average for last century is 31%)
- Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle westward to Brownsville – 47% (average for
last century is 30%)
PROBABILITY FOR AT LEAST ONE MAJOR (CATEGORY 3-4-5) HURRICANE TRACKING INTO THE CARIBBEAN (10-20°N, 60-88°W)
- 61% (average for last century is 42%)
Acknowledgment
This year’s forecasts are funded by private and personal funds. We thank the GeoGraphics Laboratory at Bridgewater State College (MA) for their assistance in developing the United States Landfalling Hurricane Probability Webpage (available online at http://www.e-transit.org/hurricane).
The forecast is a blend of a statistical analysis, a search for analog years with similarities to April-May conditions and the expected August-October conditions, and “qualitative adjustments for other factors not explicitly contained in any of these schemes.”
As they often do, the June forecast is based on a new June statistical model and uses just four predictors (the geographic ranges are in the image at the top):
| Predictor | 2011 Forecast Value |
| 1) April-May SST (15-55°N, 15-35°W) (+) | +0.3 SD |
| 2) April-May 200 MB U (0-15°S, 150°E-20°W) (+) | +1.6 SD |
| 3) ECMWF 1 May SST Forecast for September Nino 3 (5°S-5°N, 90-150°W) (-) | +0.3 SD |
| 4) May SLP (20-40°N, 30-50°W) (-) | -0.9 SD |
Decoding key: SST: Sea Surface Temperature; SLP: Sea Level Pressure, SD: Standard deviation; 200 MB U: zonal wind at atmospheric pressure 200 mb, an altitude of about 40,000 feet.
Other notes:
ENSO
The moderate-to-strong La Niña conditions of this past winter have continued to weaken since early April. According to the Climate Prediction Center (CPC), SST anomalies in the central and eastern tropical Pacific have now warmed to the point where ENSO is in its neutral state. While the moderation of tropical Pacific SSTs have continued over the past couple of months, we do not expect to see a transition to El Niño conditions during the next several months.
Current Atlantic Basin Conditions
Conditions in the Atlantic remain favorable for an active season. May SSTs across the tropical Atlantic remain at above-average levels (Figure 17). The anomalously strong trades during the latter part of the winter that caused some anomalous cooling in the tropical Atlantic have now weakened (Figure 18). Sea level pressure anomalies during the month of May were also well below-average throughout the tropical Atlantic (Figure 19). Altogether, tropical Atlantic conditions currently reflect an environment conducive for an active hurricane season.
Forthcoming Updated Forecasts of 2011 Hurricane Activity
We will be issuing a final seasonal updates of our 2011 Atlantic basin hurricane forecast on Wednesday, 3 August. We will also be issuing two-week forecasts for Atlantic TC activity during the climatological peak of the season from August-October. A late-season forecast for the Caribbean will be issued in early October. A verification and discussion of all 2011 forecasts will be issued in late November 2011. All of these forecasts will be available on the web at: http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts.
I will likely report on the Aug. 3rd update, but will probably not cover the two-week forecasts. Last year, several were dominated by current activity, low or high.
svaethesharks says: June 2, 2011 at 8:37 pm
I am personally getting sick and tired of the snide comments written so far and some before, the scoffs at probability forecasting for tropical cyclones.
I’m afraid these days anyone working on the climate is damned by association. The simple fact is that if climategate had resulted in appropriate punishments and not “vindication”, then after a few week celebrating, us sceptics wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on … the subject had shown that it didn’t tolerate that kind of behaviour and therefore we could trust the rest of them.
The fact that everyone in this subject (and many of the scientific elite) seemed quite happy to tolerate those who “hide the decline”, buddy-review, thwart FOI requests, means that we rightly have begun to believe that everyone behaves that way.
savetheshark – you need to chill some. the historical inaccuracy of the hurricane forecasts simply invites ridicule. i appreciate william gray and his skills and that he hasn’t bought into AGW, but let’s face it, they always forecast a more active than normal year and it hasn’t been happening over the past 6 years. i love the ocean and always dreamed of living at the beach growing up, but knowing hurricanes happen, i chose to stay inland a few hundred miles to stay out of the main path of destruction. it was and remains a deliberate choice. anyone who lives on the coast knows (or at least should) the risks involved and prepare accordingly. that they don’t is sad, but the price to pay for being foolish. it makes sense for the government to launch a spring campaign to remind coastal residents of the need to prepare for hurricane season. it even makes sense to use our forecasting technologies and skills to project conditions that might make the year more or less active than usual. but this trying to predict actual numbers of storms and their strengths is just non-sense. we’ve had 6 years of doomsday predictions and nada. that’s actually far more dangerous in that it undermines credibility and causes people to dismiss warnings to prepare. this could be the year it changes and we see a bunch of whoppers hit the US. have new homes built since 2005 been constructed with proper specs to better handle these storms? i hope so. andrew proved to be so destructive because roofs we’re properly anchors and were flying off compromising the integrity of the structures. i pray we don’t find ourselves similarly lax in preparedness the next time we’re tested.
Chris
June 2, 2011 at 11:48 pm
Neither Sendai nor Joplin were hurricanes. Oh, I know the more hysterical alarmists draw a supposed connection through cAGW, but it is they who are full of your bull****. Keep drinking the Kool-aid, and don’t forget your meds.
Oh, BTW, I think you mean milquetoast. q.v.
Denier … your callous attack on Chris is uncalled for! He is right in what he says … these probabilities are all about peoples safety!!! What is science supposed to do … sit back and ignore everything because we do not fully understand the systems. If humans followed that approach we would all be living in the stone age!
In line 3 — “anti-climatic” or “anti-climactic”? Are you saying the forecast opposes average weather?
[Ric> Oops. Fixed. Hmm, I suppose there would be no point in having a forecast if it always predicted the past average.]
Richard111 says:
June 2, 2011 at 11:49 pm (Edit)
Not in Gray’s concept of a warming world, Fernando posted Gray’s first order approximation of a warming world above, i.e. everything warms, but nothing else changes. (Which strikes me as a little odd as rising SSTs will evaporate a lot more water and enhance convection when the vapor condenses.)
More dust implies both dry ground and strong winds.
The Sahara is greening – see http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
I don’t know about Saharan winds, but globally wind speed is either going up http://www.ohioverticals.com/blogs/akron_law_cafe/2011/04/australian-scientists-find-substantial-increase-in-global-wind-speed/ or going down http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101017/full/news.2010.543.html
Dust storms haven’t been a big issue in the last couple of years.
I hate to say it, but all these long range predictions are a tempest in a tea kettle. As long as we keep our surveillance, monitoring and warning networks up to track short term (7 -14 days) development to give people enough warning to evacuate, we have accomplished our public policy responsibilities. These long range predictions are just a part of the “bread and circuses” act to distract people. Weather is a fundamentally chaotic system. Conditions could be ripe for 100 hurricanes to form, but they all could track up the middle of the Atlantic and the only people who would care are the sailors. Or one could form 100 miles off shore, develop quickly and demolish a populated area. Hurricane forecasting is never going to be an exact science, there are just too many unknowns on the initial conditions. It may have some utility in emergency supply budgeting, but even that is suspect. BUT, Hurricane surveillance and monitoring will always save lives.
jamadan says:
June 3, 2011 at 4:08 am (Edit)
The last page of K&G’s forecast lists the verification for the last 5 years. Looking at Net Tropical Cyclone Activity (100% is normal), the year, June forecast, and observed are:
2006: 195, 85 (that may have been a year El Niño developed mid-season)
2007: 185, 99
2008: 160, 162
2009: 90, 69
2010: 195, 196
Yes, a couple years were way over forecast, but if you read their postmortems I don’t see how you can imply they deliberately overpredicted the seasons. Those are the most interesting seasons, it’s been interesting watching them learn from those. I’ll grant you they lucked out not overpredicting 2008 and 2010.
Since 1995, we have had a positive AMO, and that greatly increases the chance for an active season – of course people will be predicting more active than average (not normal!) seasons. It pretty much requires something like an El Niño to make for a sub-average season, e.g. 2009, where they did not predict a more active than average season.
Please read the .pdf.
I consider that people who ridicule K&G’s efforts have little understanding or appreciation of science. OTOH, I’m have this twisted viewpoint that I don’t criticized goofs by professional sports players unless I think I could have done better.
Even with a high forecast, the forecast ACE value for the NA is still well below 2005.
The business of predicting hurricanes is quite humorous. Chris, it doesn’t matter if 6 billion people lived on the east coast of the US. A hurricane prediction in June does no one any good in August. Hee hee. What people really want to know and need to know is, do I have one of these things barreling down on me. And if so, how fast is it coming and in what direction is it aimed.
Funny, I just heard on the Weather Network the other day they expect “another” busy hurricane season, “just like the last 15 years”…..huh?
“Fogarty adds that an active hurricane season has been the trend for the past 15 years.”
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/storm_watch_stories3&stormfile=hurricane_season_begins_in_t_010611?ref=ccbox_homepage_category1
I’m still trying to figure out how the Japanese Tsunami has anything to do with this thread, beyond a gratuitous display of horrible disaster. The Japanese were blind-sided. People in Hurricane Alley will not be. And while predictions are perhaps over the top because of a certain randomness that we humans cannot account for, once under way, an hurricane can be avoided by getting out of the way. Comparing a tectonic event to a weather event is basically silly, except for one clear point: both events happen, and there is diddly-squat we can do can do to prevent that fact. At least hurricanes give us a bit of warning.
I normally wouldn’t comment on typos, but surely you meant anticlimactic, rather than anti-climatic in the lead paragraph. I usually hear this mistake by sports commentators, where it has nothing to do with climate.
[Ric: Feel free to point out my typos, but did you have to use a sports commentator comparison? 🙂 Fixed (well, I should’ve taken out the ‘-‘ too, but didn’t.]
@jon
Ah, diddums.
‘Heat’, ‘stay’ & ‘kitchen’ come to mind for Chris.
As do ‘pot’, ‘black’ & ‘kettle’ for you.
Control yourself (or have you skipped your meds too?).
If we followed the advice given by the scaremongers, we should all be living in the stone age.
…. except Al Gore, James Cameron and a few other members of the elite (Schnellhuber,et al)
What people need to know in order to keep themselves safe has nothing to do with someone’s best guess as to how many hurricanes there will be this year. What they need to know is:
Am I going to be hit?
If so, on what day?
How big will it be?
Such forecasts can be usefull in helping insurance companies know how much money they will need to set aside to pay claims over the next few months. Beyond that, they are mostly a curiosity.
Steve R
June 2, 2011 at 7:12 pm
Isn’t one of the more succesful indicators for Atlantic hurricane prediction 6 months out use dust levels in the subSaharen Sahel region? I thought I remembered reading about something like that.
###
I have also heard of a relationship but without reference to causal direction. One thing I do know, is that Sahel dust is a major factor in coral bleaching on this side of the Atlantic.
“The Sahara is greening”
That will probably reverse now. It had been greening during the great climate shift that started in 1976 but now that we seem to be back into the pre-1976 pattern, it will probably dry out again along the edges and begin to expand.
Generally speaking the Sahara gets wetter when the climate gets warmer. When the climate cools, the Sahara gets dry. During the Holocene climate optimum, the Sahara was apparently much wetter than it is now.
The forecast is meaningless hype generated by someone who needs to feel good about their occupation. It will save not one life.
Spend the green on moving people off the coast so the rest of us are not paying for their repairs and losses year after year, decade after decade, century after century.
P.S. As you see, I am not hiding behind a keyboard with a false identity as asserted by some critics who feel the need to dress down those who see the comedy in such forecasting.
Savethesharks,
I hate to say it, but the snark is called for. I am sorry, but if the other side of this argument is going to go to another level, there is nothing we can do but fight them at that level as well. I hate doing that as much as the next person, but when did honor win a war?
“We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be”
And of course the famous part of the speach:
“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills”
As you can see the famous Winston Churchill there instilled the thoughts that this war has no honor on either side. Sure, the honor might have been there to start, but it was stripped away by the horrors and attrocities already committed by A. Hitler. We shall fight them at every level, whether it be the lowest beachhead as in the case of flinging mud, or we shall fight them on the highest hill, but no mistake if you do not fight any battle without honor, you will be a honorable corpse and so will your cause.
The warmists have been very successful over the last couple of years since climate-gate by flinging mud. If we do not do the same, we will lose simply because we refuse to defend certain parts of the country because we state that it is not honorable.
There is no honor in defeat though. Sure, we will fight some people who do a great job as scientists, we will poke fun at them, we will above all else irritate just like the warmists who do the same to true scientists who have no trouble telling the truth but then are derided, harrassed and otherwise called names.
If we do not fight the battle at any level they choose, we lose. If we do not take the battle to them, we lose. If we continue to defend scientists who may or may not have an agenda behind their science, what are we but helpless bystanders looking at the sky and WISHING FOR THE BEST. Sorry, that does nothing.
There is no honor in defeat. There is also no honor in defending someone who could very likely be suffering from observer bias as a scientist and could very well be putting out predictions with a false sense of security that AGW is real and that the climate never changes naturally. What are we to do as sceptics after so long has passed since climagate and still the warmists are given money by our respective Governments and people still talk about such brain-dead schemes as carbon trading and cap and trade?
Yes, you are correct that maybe some scientist as in this case might not deserve the derision. But that happens when you are fighting a war for the future of our society. Like it or not, we are all fighting a war. We are fighting against various things, some of us are fighting tooth and nail against energy restrictions and taxes. Some of us are fighting a war for the truth in the science. Some of us are fighting a war against the philosophy that has caused this rot in all of the aforementioned to occur. It does not matter in the end which war we are fighting, make no mistake we are all fighting it. And in war, there is nothing you can do about collateral damage except try your best to minimize it. In this case, the best bet is to show that the said scientist is not making predictions based on glandiose delusions of human-caused climate change. Then prove that this scientist actually realize the truth. Until you show that this scientist is not biased the other way, we must assume that the rot has reached her too.
I also respect work that has been done, but I notice as in the charts above that all the predictions call for a “large hurricane season” with “stronger hurricanes” and “more likely to hit the US.”
That has been the similar prediction as the last 5 years with minor changing to words. Its like they have not even noticed changes in stuff such as ENSO, ocean temperatures, Arctic O., and solar effects.
But I will say this, whether we like it or not, the best predictor of all is that the US is more likely to get hit this hurricane season since the hurricanes tend to track towards the US in a second year la nina situation. In addition, we typically see stronger hurricanes. The number of hurricanes is the one number which has no statistical significance, and by just saying we will “see more hurricanes” they are not doing science but making a guess.
I made a guess too. Although I would change it if it was possible due to a weakening la nina, I stuck to it even though I realize it is probably low by a hurricane or two. 8-10 this year was my original educated “guess”. But we will probably see 2-3 hit the US and the odds are good that one of em can be a monster. I expect 1-2 monsters this year.
So yes, this year is going to be an exceptional year for hurricanes, but we will not see as many smaller ones, most are going to be on the larger side.
The one catch to all of this is the presence of the arctic O. being so strong. I have not see how this effects hurricane generation, and I would hazzard to guess that the pulses might do some strange things as far as that goes. But we shall see.
Live and learn.
Short term prediction of weather is VERY important for our country. Long term predictions is rather pointless for a vast majority of people in the country. If we could accuratly peg a certain week as being good or bad, that would help with vacationing and other such issues, but in the end trends and “a hot summer” are nothing that the common man cares about. Farmers and insurance companies yes. Normal people, no.
Denier … just out of interest … are you still in high school?
G & K are doing science. The scientific method requires the issuance of a prediction. If folks had listened to Gray’s predictions in the late 80s and early 90s, it could have saved this country billions of dollars, but they did not. Instead, due to his vocal stance on the ‘unscientific-ness’ of the AGW crisis, all of his requests for government funding of his tropical climate research were terminated. He had to look elsewhere for the modest funds needed to continue his research, well the likes of Mann and Hansen continued to ride the government funded gravy train.
The bottom line is that G & K are doing legitimate climate research that is already useful for insurance companies and other large entities in making seasonal plans, while not costing the U.S. tax payer a dime. As they refine their methods, the forecast will become more useful. That is one of the benefits of good science.
Meanwhile, the AGW crowd continues to feed at the government trough and has yet to make one prediction that has verified and proved useful to anyone! Most of their ‘predictions’ are proving to be costly for no reason; the opposite of useful.
So cut G & K some slack. They are the type of climate scientists we want and need!
meanwhile, in the Central Pacific: 2011 hurricane season forecast ‘below normal’
http://thegardenisland.com/news/local/article_e0937d1c-8cec-11e0-a82b-001cc4c03286.html
It is not the predictions, but the predictability of such predictions that is the problem. When was the last hurricane forecast by Dr. Gray that included the words “lower than normal”? What makes the problem worse is that insurance companies use such predictions to justify rate increases. Without a doubt, Dr. Gray puts much work into his reports, which is to be commended. But what trust can we give him when we already know what the report will say next year?
Regarding Dr. Gray, I have always wondered why someone who does his research at a place that cannot experience a hurricane directly is an expert on hurricanes. There is a difference between book knowledge and experience. This reminds me of Isaac Cline, the meteorologist who in Galveston when the city took a direct hit in 1900. Isaac Cline was born and raised in Tennessee, which never gets hurricanes. He was an excellent meteorologist. In 1899, he was assigned to Galveston. In 1900, he received a wire from Cuba warning that a hurricane was coming toward Texas. Isaac Cline had no experience with hurricanes so he relied on his book knowledge and ignored the warning until it was too late. But the Cubans, with much hurricane experience, were right.
Dr. Gray, like Isaac Cline, is an excellent meteorologist. But there is no substitute for experience. What personal experience does Dr. Gray have with hurricanes? I don’t know. I am not suggesting that Dr. Gray is like Isaac Cline. I just used Isaac Cline to illustrate the difference between knowledge and experience when it comes to hurricanes. I am also saying that if Dr. Gray lived and studied at a place that was hurricane prone he would do a better job only because he would have real world experience that cannot be learned from studying. There is a difference from seeing Jim Cantori of the Weather Channel parading around America blaming this hurricane on humans on TV then actually being in a hurricane personally.