Thread: Experts Revising 2008 SEason Predictions

We had an unusually active July this year as far as the tropics are concerned. This seems to be one factor that has caused some of our expert hurricane predictors and prediction centers to make upward revisions to their predictions for the 2008 Atlantic Basin Hurricane Season.

JEFFF MASTERS says in his blog today

expect a very active year
While I doubt we'll see anything like 2005's record hurricane season this year, I do think that the very active July we had portends that 2008 will be one of the twenty most active hurricane seasons on record. I expect four major hurricanes, with at least one of these hitting the U.S. The fact that the tropics are very quiet at present is the proverbial "calm before the storm".

UGH The weather across the US has been so weird since spring, nothing will surprise me this year

In this and the following posts are the previous and revised numbers from others. (I've boiled these down to just the numbers, from the details in Masters' blog)


Drs KLOTTBACH and GRAY (CSU):

-------------------------------PREVIOUS----------REVISED

NAMED STORMS---------------15-------------------17

HURRICANES--------------------8--------------------9

INTENSE HURRICANES---------4--------------------5

Drs KLOTTBACH and GRAY (CSU):

-------------------------------PREVIOUS----------REVISED

NAMED STORMS--------------12-16--------------14-18

HURRICANES--------------------6-9----------------7-10

INTENSE HURRICANES----------2-5----------------3-6

tropical Storm Risk

-------------------------------previous----------revised

named Storms---------------14.4------------------18.2

hurricanes--------------------7.7--------------------9.7

intense Hurricanes---------3.4--------------------4.5

Average Season vs. 2008 so far

-------------------------------AVERAGE---------2008 SO FAR

named Storms---------------10------------------5

hurricanes--------------------6-------------------2

intense Hurricanes-----------2-------------------1

Dr Jeff Masters also gave a really good explanation of ACE today:

. . . only about 10% of a typical season's activity occurs by August 8. However, this year has been unusually active. We've already had nearly 50% of the typical activity of an entire season. An average season has . . . an ACE index of 96. We've had . . . an ACE index of 39 so far in 2008. This year's activity (prior to August 1) ranked 4th all-time (since 1851) for the amount of Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE). Only 2005, 1916, and 1933 had more. All three of these years had at least five major hurricanes and ACE values of at least 175.


. . . ACE . . . is computed by summing the squares of the estimated maximum sustained wind speed of each named storm (when its wind speed is 39 mph or higher), at six-hour intervals. The resulting number (divided by 10,000 to make it more manageable), is called the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE).