Comments on: Can Researchers Forecast Hurricanes Seasons a Decade in Advance?

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 01:22:54 +0000

It sounds like they are only making predictions in aggregate. Not that “a Category 3 storm will land here on such-and-such a day 10 years from now”. More like, “we think X major storms will materialize in the Carribean 10 years from now”.

Correct?

By: Mike Saunders

Mike Saunders — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 00:41:47 +0000

Dr. Jeff Masters often writes about how Hurricane Season predictions in January have almost no skill, so I’m pretty skeptical about this. It is quite easy to predict the past!

By: VIP

VIP — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 22:49:44 +0000

Living in a hurricane region of this world, my answer to your question is a definite no. Researchers are having great difficulties to predict hurricane activities on a day to day basis. If they could improve their predictions by a few days, it would be a great improvement. The assumption that anything beyond that time frame can be predicted is a joke.

By: catmman

catmman — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 20:45:53 +0000

Storm prediction does indeed have its benefits. I can see how this would be beneficial – financially to those doing the forecasting.

Just predict a huge number of storms and beg governments for money to provide ‘data’ for protecting the populace, etc. Hell, just throw some numbers out, your bound to get a few years right. If you get a few ‘predictions’ wrong, just blame ‘unseen variables’ not the theory itself and pass it off as “Well, we were lucky. This time…” Win-win.

As a tool for validating current predictive models and methodology, this cold be useful. But it won’t be used for that. As the article suggests, it’s already being touted in helping with global climate disruption theory.