Hurricane Prediction, Pt. 2 - Path and Intensity
Tuesday, August 21, 2007 
Projections for Hurricane Dean (NOAA)This post continues the discussion of hurricane prediction begun in my recent post. There I described efforts at predicting hurricanes before they actually start, and the use of correlates such as el niño and sand in the Sahara.
What about predictions once the hurricanes are on the scene? The recent news surrounding the potential path of Hurricane Dean, and the predicted intensity, are different types of models.
There's an informative article today by Matt McGrath for BBC News that discusses the issues surrounding these predictions. (See The Science of Hurricane Prediction ) Of interest is the fact that it easier to predict the ultimate path of faster-moving hurricanes. In effect, when hurricanes "hang around" too long, their motion can be affected by many other factors - throwing off the model predictions.
The BBC News site has a number of clever animations, including an animated guide to how hurricanes form. This is a nice applet - one of a set of applets for many natural disasters, including earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, and volcanoes.
Reader Comments (2)
It is interesting that storms which around longer are harder to predict in terms of their path. I am curious, what determines hurricane speed? Here, I am referring to speed of travel, not wind velocity. Or, are the two in any way correlated? This is something I know little, if anything, about.
Of course, if a storm "hangs around" too long over open water (i.e. Gulf of Mexico) and water temperatures are at record highs, then, according to the the science of such storms, they will get much larger and more violent.
We have certainly delved into an area with nearly countless variables. Which are the most important? And, of them, can any be controlled by humans? While many argue that we have already effected long-term variables (i.e. CO2 levels and thus water temperatures/"storm fuel"), I wonder if any group of scientists has ever looked into short-term human manipulation of storms. Perhaps this is beyond our capabilities, not to mention a bit of science-fiction, but to me, it remains an interesting thought.
I assume that hurricane speed depends on differences in pressure, surface temperatures, terrain, and many other factors, including the wind speed, as you speculate. Of course, cause and effect is quite muddy here - especially the connection with wind speed.
So much of hurricane prediction is based on correlation that it is not obvious whether it is more effective to develop better correlates, or actually try to understand the underlying physical processes!
About manipulation of storms - it's definitely not Science Fiction.
I am familiar with attempts to create storms, in particular rainstorms in regions suffering from droughts. This is what led to the "cloud-seeding" ideas of Stanislaw Ulam in the 1940's (work which had its roots in early attempts to understand atmospheric effects of nuclear weapons.) For an interesting take on more recent work along these lines, see the Geo-engineering in Vogue post from the Real Climate blog. This article provides a good deal of background history - as well as a number of heated responses.