Hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin again will be above average this year, according to forecasting teams from North America and the United Kingdom.
“Based on current and projected climate signals, Atlantic basin and U.S. landfalling tropical cyclone activity are forecast to be about 160 percent of average in 2005,” said Mark Saunders and Adam Lea, with Tropical Storm Risk.com, based at University College London. The team is predicting an 80 percent probability that the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season will be above average and a 70 percent chance of an above average number of storms making landfall in the United States.
The factors underlying TSR's prediction are the forecast July through September trade wind speed over the Caribbean and tropical North Atlantic, and the forecast August through September sea surface temperature in the tropical North Atlantic. The former influences cyclonic vorticity, a measure of the spin of air mass, in the main hurricane track region, while the latter provides heat and moisture to power incipient storms. “At present, TSR anticipates both predictors' having a moderate enhancing effect on activity,” the researchers concluded.
William M. Gray and Philip J. Klotzbach, the forecasters at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo., also foresee an above-average hurricane season for the Atlantic basin and an above-average probability of a major hurricane landfall in the U.S. “We have adjusted our forecast upward from our early December forecast and may further raise our prediction in our later updates if we can be sure El Ni?o conditions will not develop,” the team said in a statement.
In addition to 13 named storms, the Colorado meteorologists anticipate three intense hurricanes, with a 73 percent chance of at least one major hurricane's making landfall along the coastline of the United States. That figure compares to an average for the last century of 52 percent. At 53 percent, the probability that a hurricane will come ashore along the East Coast, including the Florida Peninsula, also is higher than the 31 percent average for last century. The Gulf Coast, from the Florida Panhandle westward to Brownsville, has a 41 percent chance of experiencing hurricane activity. The average for last century is 30 percent.
Source: Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University.
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