With a third of the Atlantic hurricane season over and just three storms named (albeit accompanied by one tropical depression), should hurricane season prognosticators consider backing down from their early season forecasts of a wild season? And we’re not just talking about one or two Punxatawny Phils here — this year realized eight separate forecasts of named storms and hurricanes for the six-month season, which began June 1. Predictions of the number of named storms ranged from 17 to a lofty 23 — far above the average of 11 named storms realized over the last 60 years.
The real meat of hurricane season is from mid August through mid October, when about 90% of a season’s storms form. Based on the May and June forecasts, that would equate to about 15-21 tropical storms and hurricanes — still a substantially busy season. But the chatter has begun on the blogs (2nd topic on this page) and in the online and mainstream news that this year will not be like 2005. By this point in that season the Atlantic had already seen eight named storms, including two major hurricanes. The 2005 season went on to realize 27 named storms, including Category 5 Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, and one unnamed storm added to the tally in the post-season.
So what drove the early season forecasts? And why might they need to be lowered? As in 2005, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) across the Atlantic basin have been well above average since spring. In fact, record warm SSTs have dominated the main tropical cyclone development region—from 10°N to 20°N between the coast of Africa and Central America (20°W – 80°W)—for five consecutive months (see the 2nd topic entry on this page). Combine that with lower-than-normal surface pressure basin wide and the fact that El Niño was not only ending but appeared poised to transition to La Niña conditions (which it did) in the tropical Pacific, both of which are factors that can lead to more than the usual number of storms, and forecasters had almost no choice but to set their sights rather high. Conditions appeared very favorable for a quick start to a long and busy season, not unlike 2005.
Problem is, that hasn’t happened. The tropical cyclones that have developed this year have struggled. Despite all the favorable features, it appears dry air and more importantly strong wind shear across the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico in June and July have kept storms in check. Typically, the atmosphere over the Atlantic Basin moistens significantly starting in August as the westward-moving Saharan dust outbreaks wane. And seasonal wind shear also becomes more conducive for storm development by August. Still, the next four months would need to see the pace of tropical storm and hurricane formation come fast and furious to realize the forecasts. It could happen: in 1995, 16 tropical storms and hurricanes, including five major hurricanes, formed one after another after another from the last days of July through the end of October, leaving just 10 days in the three-month period free of any storms. But that kind of hurricane history isn’t likely to repeat itself. Even 2005 had more storm-free days in the same portion of the season.
So what will forecasters do? Time will tell as two of the leading forecast teams—NOAA and the Colorado State University Tropical Meteorology Project, led by Phil Klotzbach and William Gray—update their forecasts this week. (Check these links for their updated forecasts: CSU (Aug. 4) and NOAA (Aug. 5).
Update …
Largely Unchanged Forecasts Point to Busy Months Ahead
With their August updates, hurricane season forecasters have left their predictions generally intact. The CSU forecast (pdf file) remains the same with 18 named storms total, 10 hurricanes, and 5 major hurricanes. After increasing its forecast in July by one named storm that was likely to be a hurricane, Tropical Storm Risk (TSR), a private British forecasting company, is back to its early June forecast numbers, with its August update (pdf file) again calling for about 18 named storms, 10 hurricanes, and 4-5 major hurricanes projected. NOAA shaved down the upper range of its seasonal forecast numbers while keeping the lower end of the range intact for named storms and hurricanes, and narrowing the range of major hurricane expected. Its updated forecast is for 14-20 named storms, 8-12 hurricanes, and 4-6 major hurricanes, versus its June forecast of 14-23 storms, 8-14 hurricanes and 3-7 major hurricanes. Florida State University lowered its prediction by 2, from 17 to 15 named storms and from 10 to 8 hurricanes.
Uncategorized
Mercury Rising, Snow Disappearing
This past June continued a recent spate of unprecedented heat around the world, as NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) announced it was the warmest June on record (the NCDC’s data extends back to 1880), making it the fourth consecutive month of record heat. The combined global land and ocean temperature for June was 16.2°C (61.1°F), placing it 0.68°C (1.22°F) higher than the twentieth-century average. Remarkably, it was the 304th consecutive month of global temperatures above the twentieth-century average. The last month that global temperatures were below that average was February of 1985.
March, April, and May of 2010 were also the warmest of their respective months on record, and the period of January-June is also the warmest ever recorded.
With the warmth came a striking decrease in snow, as NOAA announced that North American snow cover at the end of April was at its lowest point for that time of the year since satellite record keeping began in 1967, at 2.2 million square kilometers below average. This was just four months after the snowiest December on record, as well as significantly higher-than-n0rmal snow cover in January and February, demonstrating the profound ramifications of the warm temperatures that followed.
Oklahoma School of Meteorology Gets New Director
David Parsons started as the new director of the University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology this week. OU is the largest meteorology program in the nation, with nearly 400 undergraduate and graduate students. Parsons, who replaced Fred Carr, comes to the position from NCAR as a senior scientist and cochair of the THORPEX Project.
Parsons received his B.S. in meteorology from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in atmospheric science from the University of Washington. His career has been multi-dimensional with major contributions to the field. He has written over 120 papers, book chapters, and reports, more than 40 of which appear in scholarly journals or refereed books. Parson’s research contributions span a wide range of subject matter, including advanced sounding and electromagnetic profiling technologies and techniques, mesoscale model parameterizations, extratroptical and tropical rainband physics and dynamics, and definitive dryline studies, to name just a few. Recent works include the role of transport and diffusion in the stable nocturnal boundary layer surrounding Salt Lake City, Utah. He has been nominated twice for the NCAR Publication Prize as well as the WMO Vaisala Award.
Named a Fellow of AMS in 2009. Parsons also served as panel chair on the Mesoscale Chapter for the AMS Monograph on Severe Local Storms, as editor of JAS, and was a member of the AMS Committee on Severe Local Storms.
The Big Impact of BAMS
BAMS has done it again. After claiming the number one spot for Impact Factor on the Thompson Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) ranking in 2008, BAMS came in first in the Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences category once again in 2009.
The impact factor, or IF, is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. Devised by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the ISI (now part of Thomson Reuters), the IF is calculated yearly and journals are ranked taking into account two years of citations. The total number of citations for BAMS in 2009 was 9,074 with an IF of 6.123.
The IF is primarily used to compare different journals within a field, with larger impact factors suggesting greater influence, or impact, in the field. Four other AMS journals placed in the top twenty with Journal of Climate coming in at number five, Journal of Atmospheric Sciences at thirteen, Journal of Hydrometeorology at fifteen, and Monthly Weather Review at twenty. The newest AMS journal, Weather, Climate, and Society will appear in the IF rankings for the first time in 2011 when there is sufficient citation data to calculate a score.
Join the Climate Services Dialogue Now
At the behest of Congress, the National Academy of Public Administration is formally studying of “organizational options for a Climate Service within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).” Until the end of Sunday, 27 June, you can participate in the open discussion at the NAPA Climate Dialogue web site.
The input NAPA is seeking focuses on the following questions:
What climate information and services do you find most useful currently and why? Who provides them?
How could your access to climate information and services be improved?
What mechanisms would you recommend to enable ongoing communication of your climate information and service needs to NOAA?
How should the NOAA Climate Service engage with other providers of climate information and services to meet your information needs?
What is driving your need for climate information or services?
The range of input is already impressive and thought-provoking, discussing the future of specific NOAA offices, educational aims, data archiving, the role of prediction and research in the future Service, and more. For instance, while some comments address the possible savings by reducing overlapping climate responsibilities across Federal agencies, others criticize reorganization for reorganization’s sake:
There are already excellent programs in the federal government for calculating [hydro-climatic statistics], updating them, and delivering them to users. The issue is that these programs are seriously underfunded and thus the information is seriously out of date.
It frequently seems that agencies respond to problems by reorganizing rather than by supporting the good programs that already exist. In my experience this is usually a mistake. A climate service should point people to these kinds of information and support keeping them up to date, but should not try to take this role.
Here’s another along a similar vein:
As a long time NOAA partner working in the field, I am very concerned about adding infrastructure in the Beltway, especially at a time when so much more is required of NOAA in the field. As an extramural partner funded by OAR that is ocean ecosystem goal-related, versus climate, I am concerned about what will happen to the rest of OAR when the NCS takes away more than half the program and budget.
Others have a more hopeful take on
New AMS Book Gets Behind the Camera
I was seven years old when I first came under the spell of weather, both on television and outside. It was a muggy spring night in Oklahoma, and severe thunderstorms were approaching, as they so often do that time of year. As I sat watching one of the particularly mindless situation comedies peculiar to the 1960s, the show was interrupted by a serious young woman talking about tornadoes.
How does she know what the weather’s doing? I wondered. The way Lola Hall described terrifying storms with such calmness and authority carried a touch of magic for me. From that night onward, I was hooked on meteorology, and the way television and weather interacted.
–Robert Henson, preface to Weather on the Air: A History of Broadcast Meteorology
Many a weather enthusiast first became fascinated with the weather by watching their local television meteorologist on the nightly news. Through the years, the TV weather report has a created a rich history that uniquely reflects the evolution of both science and show business. 
Now, just in time for the 38th Conference on Broadcast Meteorology, AMS Books has released Weather on the Air: A History of Broadcast Meteorology, by UCAR’s Robert Henson. It’s the most comprehensive book on the subject in print.
Henson’s narrative starts at the earliest days of TV, with the predictions of Muncie, Indiana’s Jim Fidler and–soon thereafter–the animated character Wooly Lamb on WNBT in New York City. The story continues through the comedians, “weather girls,” and other entertainers who often presented the weather reports in the ’50s and ’60s, to the eye-catching graphics, technological advancements, and the rise of 24/7 TV weather in more recent times. On the way, Henson explores key developments in the history of broadcast meteorology, including the effort to professionalize weathercasting, the advancement of women and people of color in the field, the complex interrelationships between government and private forecasters, the evolution of severe weather warnings, and the effects of climate change science and the Internet on current broadcasts.
Ultimately, the story is not just a history of meteorology on TV, but, as Bob Ryan writes in the forward, it’s “a story of the history of meteorology itself. A story of the advance in science and the application of the sciences we love. It is a story of the advances in technology and broadcast technology, the advances in how we communicate.”
You can find more information and order the book here.
Art and Science To Reign Together in Seattle
Microbursts, photography, supercooling, sculpture, Alberta Clippers, painting, sea level rise, and more. If you’re curious about the connection between these things, then you’ll want to see Forecast: Communicating Weather and Climate, a visual art exhibition with a scientific twist opening in January at the Washington State Convention Center alongside the 91st AMS Annual Meeting. Best of all, the artists making the exhibit have joined forces with your scientific colleagues to develop the connection between art and science.
Nearly half of the artists selected for the exhibition accepted the invitation to work with AMS members to create new works for this occasion. Nine of these collaborations will be on view at the Convention Center. AMS conference chair Peggy Lemone and committee member Steve Ackerman identified collaborating scientists who study what the artists are interested in exploring. Forecast collaborating scientists hail from universities and research centers in seven states in the US and Australia. In addition to Washington, the states are: Colorado, Illinois, Montana, New York, and Wisconsin. The scientists’ areas of study include Arctic sea ice; atmospheric boundary layer; atmospheric chemistry; climate dynamics and change; cloud physics; eco-meteorology; hydrology; mesoscale analysis, convection, forecasting, and meteorology; oceanography; optical sciences; paleoclimate; precipitation physics; radar; regional climate; weather; and wind energy.)
Following the theme of the Seattle meeting, “Communicating Weather and Climate,” Forecast will engage scientists, artists, and the general public in dialogue on innovative ways to communicate and understand weather and climate issues. The exhibit will feature the works of more than 30 regionally, nationally, and internationally recognized artists based in Washington or featured in Seattle art collections.
“I can say from personal experience that working with an artist, you discover the commonality between the sciences and the arts. The creative process is similar: we both want to ‘see’ the world in new ways and to communicate our vision to others,” comments 2010 AMS President Peggy LeMone. “These scientist-artist dialogues give us a better chance of communicating this vision—and through the arts we can avoid the barriers people might have to learning something new.”
The exhibit is a collaboration between AMS and EcoArts Connections (EAC), which brings together science, arts, and other organizations to advance understanding of climate change and sustainability through performances, exhibits, talks, consulting, and other activities.
“In addition to being aesthetically nourishing, the exhibition will also be scientifically engaging, helping the public better experience a broad array of weather and climate activities.” says Marda Kirn, executive director of EAC. “The works will share not only the beauty of natural forces, but also the impact of weather and climate upon public health and safety, economic growth, national security, sustainability, and air and water quality.”
The exhibit will open on Monday 24 January and will continue thru 9 April 2011. On that first day (5-7 pm) there will be a private opening reception at the exhibit for AMS donors and collaborating artists and scientists followed by a public reception from 7-9 pm.
Forecast is made possible in part by the American Meteorological Society, Brainerd Foundation, NASA, JOSS, and UCAR.
Image Conscious
Right or wrong, people often tell tales about frequent disagreement between weather forecasts. Take a random example posted by the Cherry Hill, NJ, school administration:
The decision to change school schedules due to inclement weather is based on the best information available when the decision is made; however, we can never be sure how the weather will affect our area. Even meteorologists disagree on weather predictions.
Such, um…(cough, cough)…nonsense… deserves a chuckle when brought to good-humored life by photographer Harry Lim in this doctored image of Orlando, Florida, broadcast meteorologists. See Lim’s blog for the full image and description of the photo shoot for an upcoming issue of a local homeowners’ association magazine, Baldwin Park Living.
Hoping for XLVIII°F?
The Super Bowl is, of course, more than just a game. In fact, some might argue that the game is secondary to all of the social activities that go on during Super Bowl week. (And then there are the commercials, but let’s not go there…) There’s no doubt that many view the Super Bowl as an event where they can see and be seen, so the NFL’s decision on Tuesday to play Super Bowl XLVIII outdoors in New Jersey is sure to upset some of those who prefer partying to pigskins.
This will be the first Super Bowl to be played outdoors in a cold-weather city, and the NFL waived its weather rules to allow New York/New Jersey to apply for hosting the game. Previously, the league only allowed the Super Bowl to be played in a location where the external temperature normally exceeds 50°F during the time of the game or where the stadium has a closed roof. With New York’s Giants and Jets having built a $1.6-billion stadium in New Jersey that opens this year, the league felt the region had a selling point that would outshine any weather issues, and after four rounds of secret balloting, NFL owners agreed, awarding New York/New Jersey the 2014 event over Tampa and Miami, two cities that have hosted the game a total of 14 times.
The coldest Super Bowl occurred in 1972, when the temperature was 39°F at the kickoff of Super Bowl VI in New Orleans’s Tulane Stadium. (A complete list of Super Bowl temperatures can be found here.) While the exact date of Super Bowl XLVIII has not yet been determined, it appears this could be the first time the game’s number is greater than the temperature. AccuWeather Meteorologist Bernie Rayno notes that the normal weather for the area during the game includes temperatures in the 30s with 10-20-mph winds; interestingly, there is a better chance of rain than snow: Using a target date of February 2 and records from nearby Newark, only 4% of days over the last 44 years had snowfall on that day (the greatest amount being 3 inches in 1985), while 14% percent of the days had rainfall. As Rayno points out, though, “you’re playing averages. Only 20 percent of the years recorded a high temperature within 2 degrees of the average high of 41 degrees. Climate is a product of extremes.”
And as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, “People talk about the weather, but, you know, this is football, not beach volleyball.”
But try telling that to someone who paid north of $1,000 for a ticket.
Not Sure How to Say Uncertainty?
A posting today on the Weather and Climate Discussion blog of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading tackles the burgeoning subject of communicating forecast uncertainty. It ends with a well-chosen quote from Francis Bacon:
If a man will begin with certainties he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
This resourceful use of literary heritage sends us hunting for other like-minded quotations. A quick check of a quotations reference yields plenty of quips and admonishments. Most are too metaphysical for meteorological musing. For instance, from Kahlil Gibran:
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
Hmmmm. Maybe that’s not the best thought for portraying ensemble modeling results. Fortunately, there are more suitable candidates, as in this one from the English poet, Robert Browning
Who knows most, doubts most;…
(Unfortunately, Browning’s corollary is not so reassuring)
…entertaining hope means recognizing fear.
On this side of the Pond, communicating uncertainty becomes even more heavy-handed. From 20th Century American legal eagle, Clarence Darrow comes this motivation:
Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.
Clearly, the thesaurus is a dangerous place to hang out: “doubt” is the downer scientists avoid with “uncertainty.” Better to parse out Donald Rumsfeld’s oft unappreciated and surprisingly articulate case for ensemble modeling:
There are known knowns; these are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.