Scientists are testing a new model for predicting the number of hurricanes that are expected to form during the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30.
When they tested the model by hind casting the number of hurricanes that occurred each season from 1900 to 1949, they found it improved the accuracy of seasonal forecasting for the North Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico by 23 percent.
“You need to look at the historical data to assess today’s risk,” says Xubin Zeng, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona, who helped develop the new model.
For the 2016 season, the researchers’ model predicts eight hurricanes in the North Atlantic, including the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, with a range of six to 11. Six is the historical average for Atlantic hurricanes since 1950.
Unlike last year, El Niño played no role in this year’s hurricane prediction, but ocean surface temperatures, as always, did. Surface temperatures over the tropical Atlantic are running warmer than average this year, says Zeng, and that favors hurricane activity.
