How are hurricanes predicted?
Some climate factors are known to affect hurricane frequency for a given ocean or a given year. For instance, El Niño enhances upper-level winds that tend to suppress Atlantic hurricanes, while La Niña has the opposite effect. Each year, out of dozens of disturbances that cross the tropical Atlantic, only a handful encounter the right combination of light wind shear and warm ocean temperatures that allows for hurricane development. The behavior of tropical storms and hurricanes is predicted by high-resolution computer models at the NOAA Tropical Prediction Center (see Web site, above). Hurricane motion can be projected with some skill out to five days. Changes in storm intensity are still difficult to predict, even within a day or two, but some progress has been made with better computer models. An upgraded atmosphere-ocean model introduced in 2001 by the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory reduces the average error in hurricane intensity predictions by more than 25%. New observ
