The email sent will contain a link to this article, the article title, and an article excerpt (if available). For security reasons, your IP address will also be included in the sent email.
I have written before about modeling earthquakes and hurricanes - two phenomena are often not covered in homeowners insurance because they are Acts of God. There is still a long way to go before these are understood to the satisfaction of a predominance of scientists.
But what about prediction? With hurricane season about to start in earnest in the Atlantic, it has been pretty quiet. How are hurricanes predicted, and how good are these predictions?
El Niño events and hurricanes are highly correlated, and hence the Niño is part of every hurricane forecasters toolkit/ There has been a lot of publicity of late indicating a strong correlation between Saharan sand storms and hurricane activity, suggesting that sand activity would complement El Nino as a predictor.
While no one would dispute the value of another correlate for hurricane activity, I did notice the typical media confusion between understanding what was going on, and what was purely a prediction based on a correlation. I was just about to write one of my typical rants when I came across a blog that already took the media to task back in 2006. Written by Daniel Collins from UW-Madison on his Down To Earth blog, the post title says it all:
Return to Article
