Twenty-five years of Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts(1984-2008)

摘要

The Tropical Meteorology Project at Colorado StateUniversity, led by Dr. William Gray, has been issuingAtlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts in early June andearly August since 1984. This paper examines the skill ofthese forecasts over the past twenty-five years (1984-2008)compared with climatology and a previous 3-year, 5-yearand 10-year mean. Seasonal forecasts are shown to havesmaller mean-squared errors than any of these metrics formost parameters, although improvements have been modest.The forecast models used by the Tropical MeteorologyProject have changed over time, and the current early Juneand early August model's skill at hindcasting the pasttwenty-five years are investigated using cross-validation.Preliminary research indicates that using these new modelsmay result in more significant skill improvements in futureyears.