PSU Atlantic hurricane season forecast: 16 named storms
Expect a busy Atlantic hurricane season this year, with sixteen named storms, say Pennsylvania State University (PSU) hurricane scientists Michael Mann and Michael Kozar. Their annual Atlantic hurricane season forecast issued on May 16 calls for 12 - 20 named storms this season, which starts June 1 and runs until November 30. An average season has 10 - 11 named storms. Their prediction was made using statistics of how past hurricane seasons have behaved in response to sea surface temperatures (SSTs), the El Niño/La Niña oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and other factors. This year's forecast is primarily based on three factors:
1) The current above-average sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Main Development Region (MDR) for hurricanes, from Central America to the coast of Africa between 10°C and 20°C North latitude, will continue into the main part of hurricane season;
2) The fading La Niña event in the Eastern Pacific Ocean will be replaced by neutral El Niño/La Niña conditions;
3) The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) will be near average during hurricane season.

Figure 1. Hurricane Igor of 2010 as seen from the International Space Station.
The PSU team will also be making a new experimental forecast based not on the absolute MDR sea surface temperatures, but on difference between the MDR SST and ocean temperatures over the rest of the globe's tropical oceans. Some research has suggested that Atlantic hurricane activity is greater when this relative difference in SSTs is high, not necessarily when the absolute MDR SST is high (in other words, if all the world's tropical oceans have record high SSTs, we wouldn't get an unusually active Atlantic hurricane season, even with record warm SSTs in the Atlantic.) This new experimental forecast is predicting higher activity: 19 named storms in the Atlantic this year.
The PSU team has been making Atlantic hurricane season forecasts since 2007, and these predictions have done pretty well:
2007 prediction: 15 Actual: 15
2009 prediction: 12.5 Actual: 9
2010 prediction: 23 Actual: 19
NOAA will be issuing their annual pre-season Atlantic hurricane season forecast at 11:30am on Thursday, and I'll make a post on that Thursday afternoon. Tropical Storm Risk, Inc. (TSR) issues their pre-season forecast on May 24, and Colorado State University issues theirs on June 1.
My next post on the Mississippi flood will be on Friday.
Links:
PSU 2011 Atlantic hurricane season forecast issued on May 16.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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These could actually be Jamaican bears... just change the snow to sand and voila!!!! They're listening to reggae music and behind the bbq pit (you can't see the cooler) are red stripe beer...
I don't think either of those apply well to polar bears in the wild. They don't pur, smile, wag tails...
If you see a polar bear smiling at you, go ahead, see if he licks your face or rolls over for a belly rub once you start petting him.
Link
I know its foxnews, blah, blah, blah. Its a funny article though.
Here are the predicted doomsdays just for 2011:
Date ---------------- Source
April 6, 2011 -------- Marilyn Agee
May 21, 2011 -------- Electronic Bible Fellowship
May 29, 2011 -------- Marilyn Agee
October 21, 2011 ------ Electronic Bible Fellowship(among others)
There have been multiple predicted doomsdays every year since at least the 1990s. From the 1970s through the 90s there was at least one doomsday prediction nearly every year. As you look back in time before the 1970s the predictions are less and less frequent, but there are doomsday predictions dating all the way back to the time when Jesus was alive (and probably many before that).
Here's a great source for info about doomsday predictions:
From the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
The only problem with this is that it focuses only on hurricanes, not tropical storms.
There's always something good about something bad that happens; sometimes it just takes a while to figure that out.
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