Why Europeans Are So Good at Forecasting Hurricanes
source: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Why-Europeans-are-so-good-at-forecas...
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When it comes to forecasting hurricanes, a great incongruity of modern meteorology is that European scientists are the best in the world at predicting the paths of Atlantic storms.
That's striking because in the past 150 years just one tropical cyclone - Hurricane Vince in 2005 - has actually struck Europe. Vince did so as a depression, bringing 30-mph sustained winds to southern Spain.
And yet the European forecast model is the undisputed king of hurricane forecasting at the moment, better than anything North America has to offer.
So why have the Europeans become so good at hurricane forecasting?
"It's difficult to distinguish one aspect against another, but there are a number of things that we have improved progressively over the past decade," Thépaut said.
The European model doesn't actually forecast hurricanes. It's a "global model," meaning it forecasts conditions around the world. When a new "run" of the model comes out, it forecasts global weather for the next 10 days.
Part of its success in predicting the development and movement of large storms is its resolution. This means the model divides the surface of the planet into a grid of boxes that are approximately 10 miles by 10 miles.
The Global Forecast System model, with less computer hardware at its disposal, has a resolution of about 16 miles.
But it's not just resolution that matters, Thépaut said. Scientists have also gained a deeper understanding of the physics that control large weather systems and have improved their ability to model those conditions.
That's striking because in the past 150 years just one tropical cyclone - Hurricane Vince in 2005 - has actually struck Europe. Vince did so as a depression, bringing 30-mph sustained winds to southern Spain.
And yet the European forecast model is the undisputed king of hurricane forecasting at the moment, better than anything North America has to offer.
So why have the Europeans become so good at hurricane forecasting?
"It's difficult to distinguish one aspect against another, but there are a number of things that we have improved progressively over the past decade," Thépaut said.
The European model doesn't actually forecast hurricanes. It's a "global model," meaning it forecasts conditions around the world. When a new "run" of the model comes out, it forecasts global weather for the next 10 days.
Part of its success in predicting the development and movement of large storms is its resolution. This means the model divides the surface of the planet into a grid of boxes that are approximately 10 miles by 10 miles.
The Global Forecast System model, with less computer hardware at its disposal, has a resolution of about 16 miles.
But it's not just resolution that matters, Thépaut said. Scientists have also gained a deeper understanding of the physics that control large weather systems and have improved their ability to model those conditions.
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