New Website: Seasonal Hurricane Predictions
Barcelona Supercomputing Center and Colorado State University in association with XL Catlin have launched a new website to track seasonal hurricane forecasts and the evolution of hurricane activity.
Seasonal Hurricane Predictions brings together forecasts from major centers that specialize in Atlantic hurricane forecasting.
It also offers extensive information to promote understanding of the factors that contribute to these meteorological phenomena, which can have devastating consequences, and to help explain why different seasonal forecast models can produce different predictions.
Seasonal Hurricane Predictions has been created to pool predictions by university, government and private entities that carry out forecasts for the hurricane season, which officially runs from June 1st to November 30th, and to make them available to the wider public.
The centers whose forecasts are presented on the website are: AccuWeather, Coastal Carolina University, Colorado State University, MDA Weather Services, North Carolina State University, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA], Penn State University, The University of Arizona, Weatherbell Analytics, The Weather Company, WeatherTiger [all based in the U.S.], the Servicio Meteorológico Nacional of México, the Instituto Cubano de Meteorología [Cuba], StormGeo [Norway], Tropical Storm Risk at University College London, and the UK Met Office [United Kingdom].
Using these predictions, the website shows the average number of hurricanes that are expected to affect the North Atlantic and those that have already occurred in the current season and the previous ones since 1966. A color code indicates the degree of activity forecast for the upcoming hurricane season.
The website offers areas for non-specialists as well as more detailed information on each of the available forecasts.
The site also provides an explanation for the general public on several climatic factors that influence hurricane activity in the Atlantic, as well as the aspects assigned greater importance by different predictions for the current hurricane season.
The objective of this section is to help people understand hurricane variability and why there could be divergent predictions for the upcoming season.
Seasonal Hurricane Predictions has been developed by Barcelona Supercomputing Center and Colorado State University, who jointly carried out the scientific work, and the graphic designer Iskiam Jara, who was responsible for the design and implementation of the website.
The project was sponsored by global re/insurer XL Catlin.
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