Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere

CIRA Tropical Cyclone Forecast Uncertainty Product Development for the National Hurricane Center

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) implemented the Hurricane Strike Probability program in 1983 in recognition of the need to provide uncertainty information to complement their deterministic track and intensity forecasts to aid decision makers in mitigation activities. The Strike Probabilities only provided information about track forecast uncertainty and were replaced by the wind speed probabilities (WSP) in 2006. The WSP model was developed by CIRA in collaboration with NHC and NESDIS/RAMMB, and several modifications have been made since the original implementation. CIRA is also developing the next generation WSP that includes higher spatial resolution and a more accurate treatment of surface wind reduction over land. In the longer term, CIRA is also developing new methods to estimate tropical cyclone track and intensity forecast uncertainty using machine learning methods, which have the potential to further improve the WSP model. This presentation will summarize CIRA’s contributions to NHC’s current operational WSP model and future directions for model improvements.