Five year model of Atlantic hurricanes

Hurricanes cause drastic social problems as well as generate huge economic losses. A reliable forecast of the level of hurricane activity covering the next several seasons has the potential to mitigate against such losses through improvements in preparedness and insurance mechanisms. We develop a statistical model to predict North Atlantic hurricane activity out to five years. The algorithm has two components, a time series model to forecast average hurricane-season Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST), and a regression model to forecast the hurricane rate given the predicted SST value. The algorithm uses Monte Carlo sampling to generate distributions for the predicted SST and model coefficients. For a given forecast year, a predicted hurricane count is conditional on a sampled predicted value of Atlantic SST. Thus forecasts are samples of hurricane counts for each future year. Model skill is evaluated over the period (1997--2005) and compared against climatology, persistence, and other seasonal forecasts issued during this time period. Results indicate that the algorithm will likely improve on earlier efforts and perhaps carry enough skill to be useful in the long-term management of hurricane risk. Read more.