NU Online News Service, March 22, 10:26 a.m.EST
|A duo of hurricane forecasters at Colorado State University saysconditions favor a less active Atlantic hurricane season in2012.
|“The combination of a warming tropical Pacific and a coolingtropical Atlantic are leading us to think that the 2012 Atlantichurricane season will have less activity than the average 1981-2010season,” according to an update from Phillip J. Klotzbach andWilliam M. Gray.
|The qualitative forecast was released in advance of the NationalHurricane Conference in Orlando, Fla. starting on March 26. Aforecast based on mathematical formulas will be released April 4,they say.
|The prediction based on the duo's observations of conditionsincorporates a cooling Atlantic Ocean over the last several months.Additionally, there is a “relatively high chance that El Niño willdevelop this summer and fall,” they say.
|The El Niño weather pattern typically decreases hurricaneactivity because the wind shear it produces breaks up stormformations.
|The weather phenomenon is important to hurricane prediction. InJanuary, Klotzbach and Gray said chances were high for another active hurricane season intheAtlantic in 2012 if El Niño does not develop.
|Accompanying the team's most recent prediction is a warning: “Westress the need to realize that there is inherent uncertainty inseasonal [tropical-cyclone] prediction.”
|“Hurricanes can make landfall in inactive seasons and do majordamage,” they add. See hurricanes Alicia in 1983 and Andrew in1992, the forecasters say.
|For 2011, the CSU forecast team had predicted that the hurricaneseason would be “well above average.” In June of last year, theteam called for 16 named storms, nine hurricanes and five majorhurricanes. In the end, the season produced 20 named storms, withseven hurricanes, and three major hurricanes.
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