New Climate Models Predict Hurricane Seasons Years in Advance
Hurricane Tomas This November 5 pic from the NASA Earth Observatory captures Hurricane Tomas weakening as it passes between Cuba and Haiti. NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC It's still hard to know just how big an Atlantic hurricane is going to get or where it might make landfall until just days before it strikes, but meteorologists have long been able to predict with fair certainty how many hurricanes will be spawned in the next hurricane season. Now a team of English researchers may have just extended those predictions to include not just the upcoming season but the upcoming decade with better models that can foretell several years out how many hurricanes there will be each year. Climate modelers at the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, England, are using decadal climate prediction to take into account both how climate systems vary internally and external factors...