A better method for predicting the number of hurricanes in an upcoming season has been developed by a team of University of Arizona atmospheric scientists.
The UA team's new model improves the accuracy of seasonal hurricane forecasts for the North Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico by 23 percent. The team's research paper was published online in the journal Weather and Forecasting on March 25.
The team developed the new model by using data from the 1950 to 2013 hurricane seasons. They tested the new model by seeing if it could "hindcast" the number of hurricanes that occurred each season from 1900 to 1949.
After much trial and error, Davis met Zeng's challenge. The model Davis developed does a better job of forecasting the Atlantic hurricane season by incorporating the force of the wind on the ocean and the sea surface temperature over the Atlantic. The model includes the effect of El Niño only for years when the AMO is in the cool phase.
Compared with the other models, the UA model de-emphasized the role of El Niño when the AMO is in the warm phase, as it has been for the past 15 years.
Next the team plans to examine the forecasting models for the eastern Pacific hurricanes -- the ones that hit Baja California and the western coast of Mexico and Central America.
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