Recipe for a Storm — Forecasting a Hurricane Season

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers investigating the ingredients that go into a hurricane think they have found a reliable basis for predicting the overall strength of a hurricane season. Jim Kossin and Dan Vimont have found a basin-wide circulation pattern that offer one possible explanation in the previously unexplained differences in long-term hurricane trends. "Kossin and Vimont, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, noticed that warmer water is just one part of a larger pattern indicating that the conditions are right for more frequent, stronger hurricanes in the Atlantic. The atmosphere reacts to ocean conditions and the ocean reacts to the atmospheric situation, creating a distinct circulation pattern known as the Atlantic Meridional Mode (AMM). The AMM unifies the connections among the factors that influence hurricanes such as ocean temperature, characteristics of the wind, and moisture in the atmosphere."

Comments

Re:Wisconsin

[nido]

Good thing these fine young scholars are boldly venturing forth into the areas of meteorology most crucially important to the Midwestern region of the United States. Oceans drive climate systems across the entire planet. Surely you've heard of El Nino and La Nina? One is a 'warm ocean', and the other is a 'cool ocean'.

Furthermore, the positions of warm and cool spots in the ocean control where the jet streams flow, and the jet streams determine who gets rain and who gets drought. I understand that the warm anomalies are probably caused by underwater volcanic activity, but this is one aspect of the earth's geology that we have precious little data about - those underwater volcanoes are notoriously difficult to study...

Wisconsin has lots of farming which is dependent on rainfall, so it's entirely appropriate that they're trying to improve their forecasting models.

Re:Wisconsin

[heinousjay]

Can we also ignore the negligible effects of the sun heating the earth?

Re:Well, yeah

[spvo]

Yes, nature will most likely always be too complex to predict, but that is because its a massive chaotic system. I would guess there will always be too many unforseen initial conditions that would blow up and lead to very different, and unpredictable, results. In any case, it has nothing to do with the heisenberg principle. It doesn't apply to macroscopic systems, and I think a hurricane definitely qualify as large.