The remarkable predictability of inter‐annual variability of Atlantic hurricanes during the past decade

A newly developed global model, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) High‐Resolution Atmospheric Model (HiRAM) which is designed for both weather predictions and climate‐change simulations, is used to predict the tropical cyclone activity at 25‐km resolution. Assuming the persistence of the sea surface temperature anomaly during the forecast period, we show that the inter‐annual variability of seasonal prediction for hurricane counts in the North Atlantic basin is highly predictable during the past decade (2000–2010). A remarkable correlation of 0.96 between the observed and model predicted hurricane counts is achieved. The root‐mean‐square error of the predicted hurricane number is less than 1 per year after correcting the model's negative bias. The predictive skill of the model in the tropics is further supported by the successful prediction of a Madden‐Julian Oscillation event initialized 7‐day in advance of its onset.

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