Posted on 12/18/2007 4:50:00 AM PST by Kaslin
With the official hurricane season now over, we now have a better idea of what 85%+ forecast certainty meant: Wrong 100% of the time.
In August, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecast a 85% probability there would be an "above normal" hurricane season.
This is the second year running the government hurricane forecast was wrong. This 0-2 record may tell us something about other similarly "certain" forecasts, such as those issued by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
If forecasters can't get hurricane projections right during hurricane season, why should we trust their forecasts for a hundred years from now?
NOAA had predicted 7-9 hurricanes and 3-5 major hurricanes, but there were just six hurricanes, only two of which were "major." There are "normally" six hurricanes, two major, and 11 named storms.
The sixth hurricane came only three days before the official end of the hurricane season, when NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC) quietly upgraded tropical storm Karen to hurricane status. The timing of the re-designation - at the moment hurricane season post-mortems were already running in newspapers throughout the country - may have struck some as a bit suspicious.
But National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen insists that the timing was purely coincidental.
"Its re-classification was not related to any particular time of the season," Feltgen told me. "NHC specialists are consummate professionals and would never name (or not name) a tropical cyclone for the sole purpose of verifying a product."
He was not able to cite another example, however, when such a re-classification came so close to the end of the season.
Even with Karen's change in status, the hurricane season was unusually quiet. The Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) Index, which measures storm duration and intensity, was just 70.54 this year, more than 20% below the median and a little over half of what NOAA predicted. Hurricanes Lorenzo and Humberto both had lower ACEs than any tropical storm in 2006, and the season's overall ACE - including the two category 5 hurricanes - was still less than the ACE of 2004's Hurricane Ivan all by itself.
NOAA did get the number of named storms right: There were 15 this year, four above what the agency considers normal and in the middle of the range projected. Unfortunately, "normal" doesn't mean a great deal.
For one thing, NOAA has changed the criteria for naming storms - most recently in 2002, when subtropical storms were named for the first time.
For another, only subtropical storms, tropical storms and hurricanes that are identified as such while they're occurring are named. Last year, one storm that should have been named was overlooked. In 1964, three tropical cyclones - equal to a quarter of such storms that year - weren't named.
And finally, there are vast differences in the quality of data available to NOAA over time, which makes "normal" difficult to ascertain.
NOAA's forecast last year was similarly dire - and even more off-target.
One wonders about the level of certainty bandied about by global warming forecasters.
The IPCC says it is very likely (greater than 90% certain) that precipitation in high latitudes will increase, the frequency of heat waves over most land areas will rise and the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) will slow during the 21st century. Slowing of the MOC is of particular concern, as it is the process that permits the ocean's warm upper waters to be transported to the far north and cool deep waters to be returned toward the equator resulting in more moderate climates.
If the IPCC's projections are anything like NOAA's, we have nothing to worry about.
Global warming alarmists have exploited NOAA and IPCC forecasts to frighten the public in hopes of increasing public support for economically-ruinous caps on U.S. carbon emissions.
The World Wildlife Fund, for example, says global warming is putting "hurricanes on steroids," but that's only true if they're referring to one of the side-effects of long-term steroid use - impotency.
Unfortunately, NOAA is helping fuel the scare campaign through its annual forecasts and its reports of storm and heat "records" -- records the agency knows it has no way to verify.
The count of tropical storms, for example, would have increased dramatically even if actual storm activity had not increased, because our ability to monitor weather is constantly improving.
The Quick Scatterometer, a satellite that measures the ocean's surface winds, was launched just eight years ago. It produces more than double the daily measurements of its predecessor, launched just three years earlier, which itself had increased by more than 100 times the amount of ocean wind information reported from ships.
Increased resources and technological advancement across the board - from that used in satellites to Hurricane Hunter aircraft - means we are identifying storm systems we wouldn't have known about in the past.
Hurricane Karen is a good case in point. NHC estimates that Karen reached a maximum speed of 65 knots per hour (or 74.9 miles per hour) - only about 1.2 mph above tropical storm status. No direct measurement of the storm's wind speed was taken. Instead, an estimate was made based on satellite imagery and data from Hurricane Hunter aircraft using state-of-the-art Stepped-Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR) technology taken six hours after Karen started losing strength. The Hurricane Hunter aircraft had only been equipped with the SFMR this summer.
Even if NHC's extrapolation of the data is correct - and 1.2 mph leaves little room for error - it's unlikely that Karen would have been classified as a hurricane in years past.
NHC's Feltgen ducked a specific question on this, but indirectly conceded that it was possible.
"Technology such as satellites and the SFMR has allowed forecasters to detect... several tropical cyclones that might have otherwise gone undetected in the past," Feltgen said. "In addition, the technology also permits a more accurate measurement of the storm intensity."
NOAA doesn't mention its changing criteria for naming storms, nor the vast differences in data quality over time, when it issues annual hurricane season forecasts. Yet it continues to portray these forecasts and subsequent storm reports in a historical context, as if what it is saying is meaningful.
It holds no meaning in science, but may in political science.
If NOAA continues to dabble in politics, Americans should afford it all the respect it does to politicians...
...very little.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. They must really think the public stupid if they get the hurricane season wrong 2 years in a row, yet expect us to believe their doom and gloom predictions for the earth’s climate change over the next 200 years.
Those people that forecast these hurricanes need to have their salary set according to job performance, and in this case, they need a CUT of 85% in their income.
They’ll just blame the unpredictability of their forecasts on global warming screwing up all their models. ;-)
“They’ll just blame the unpredictability of their forecasts on global warming screwing up all their models. ;-)”
LOL!! Yup. Or Bush.
Maybe they missed the ocean cooling info that was posted on a couple of threads here.
Or maybe they receive funding grants from pro global warming organizations.
I know you meant that as a joke, but I wouldn't doubt we'll be presented with some variation of that as an excuse. The truly absurd thing is that many in the general public will buy it.
However, if they were investing in oil futures skyrocket on their "ifs" and "coulds"--kaching kaching..
If Pubbies still had Congress wonder if screams would be about to investigate???
I was so thankful that hurricane season 2006 wasn’t as scary as season 2005. We own a home on the Texas Gulf Coast just 23 ft above sea level. Have lived there off and on since 1973 and have never lost a shingle due to a storm, and hope to keep it that way. Our area has suffered floods but we were dry all three times. Sure is scary though when hurricanes head our way. But then again we also have lived in California where the earthquakes and fires can destroy us.
It’s 19 degrees in Charlotte this morning.
How much is your gasoline? How much was a gallon last year?
With all due respect, Feltgen (at this point not much respect is due), your "product" and your weasely explanation are defective.
I suppose if you do enough predicting, you will eventually get it right. Then they will come back and say, I told you so.
I understand your point but, based on the wildfire spread of the global warming hoax, they're just one more source cashing in on the fraud. I would also remind people that they also blew the hurricane forecast for 2004 when FloriDUH saw 4 hurricanes in about a 6 - 8 week period and the whole season chewed up every name they had established for the year and went into the Greek alphabet. The problem is larger than we think because most people only look at the last two years.
By the same token, climatologists have an overall track record that doesn't begin to approach the accuracy of Poor Richard's Almanac. Anyone who thinks that people who can't look out the window and tell if it is raining can tell us what the weather will do in 100 or 200 years deserves the OwlGore tax that the UN wants to impose on us.
$2.74 now, $2.09 last year.
Therefore, you are pleased with the dims in Congress?
I thought by now global warming will have heated up the earth so much that I would be sitting on my patio drinking beer on Christmas eve. As of today I would have to shovel off the snow and worry about my beer freezing.
Mostly good article, but this quip, while clever, is nonsense. Also: It's easy to pile on NOAA since they're on the wrong side of the debate, but skeptic hero and renowned hurricane expert Dr. William Gray swung and missed as well.
(Sorry, I guess I'm in a grumpy mood today)
These are the same people who push the PC global warming. So what can we expect? Truth is the number of storms gravitates to the mean.
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