Computer-modeled severe-weather trend forecasting distorts reality

While media reports on major weather events convey the distinct impression that catastrophic climate change is causing an unprecedented increase in the frequency and severity of hurricanes, the reality turns out to be quite different.

Using carefully combined information sets and dynamic statistical computer modeling, the Weather Channel and other trusted sources have made predictions for the 2023 hurricane year, generally calling for 15 named storms, seven of which may become hurricanes. Three of these may be Category 3 or higher. In a break from past years’ doomsday forecasts, the Colorado State University Tropical Meteorology Project team reflects official sources in saying this will be a "slightly below-normal" season.

Many wonder whether this year’s enigmatic computer models and attendant forecasts have been toned down to reflect reality: Mariners and coastal residents, bombarded annually by hurricane alarmism, have come to distrust the oracles. According to the American Meteorological Society, “the reduction in trust due to inaccuracy is well documented.”

Furthermore, according to NOAA, "a 10-day – or longer – forecast is only right about half the time. Meteorologists use computer programs called weather models to make forecasts. Since we can’t collect data from the future, models have to use estimates and assumptions to predict future weather. The atmosphere is changing all the time, so those estimates are less reliable the further you get into the future."

Aside from the "estimates and assumptions" that guide modeling, this is what is known for sure: Official sources show there has been no clear trend in Continental U.S. landfall hurricane frequency in over a century. According to the IPCC, “A subset of the best-track data corresponding to hurricanes that have directly impacted the USA since 1900 is considered to be reliable, and shows no trend in the frequency of USA landfall events."

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Recent predictions have turned out wrong. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center said 2022 would be a whopper, "predicting above-average hurricane activity [this] year – which would make it the seventh consecutive above-average hurricane season." It wasn’t. In fact, in terms of combined frequency, intensity, and duration, 2022 represented a noteworthy "low mark" in the past 42 years of all hurricane occurrences on the planet.

Talk of seven "above-average" seasons was the real whopper. The eleven years from 2006-2017 show an unprecedented period in which no major hurricane made continental landfall, and yet the "average" data set was selected to comprise these years. As an analogy, imagine rolling dice 100 times and getting a predictably median average, with slightly decreasing set averages over the course of the hundred rolls. The news, were it news, would be the slight decrease. But say the last 15 or so rolls – the last 15% of the test – include a run so low as to set records, followed by an upwards spike at the very end. It would be disingenuous to cut out 85% of the original sample, and to include only the low rolls and declare the last spike consecutively "above average." Yet, that is akin to what was said and amplified in the news media.

The chart below, courtesy of University of Colorado Environmental Studies professor Roger Pielke, Jr., shows the actual unadjusted NOAA record from 1900 to 2022, wherein the vertical axis indicates number of hurricanes recorded for that year. (1985 is commonly believed to have had six landfalling hurricanes, tied for the record with 1886 and 2020.)

The chart displays a century of plain, unadjusted data – leaving out monster year 1886 – and showing high and low anomalies of various kinds, but no discernible trend. Indeed, the same data, extracted directly from NOAA’s records and critically not “adjusted” for anything, led the peer-reviewed Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society to conclude, "Since 1900 neither observed CONUS landfalling hurricane frequency nor intensity shows significant trends, including the devastating 2017 season."

Though not entirely a roll of the dice, long-term hurricane forecasting is a "not so exact science," says a Massachusetts Institute of Technology website, almost infinitely complicated and perhaps nearly impossible. Big storms do surprise populations and periods of major hurricanes are known to occur, at times, in cycles. Actual, recorded data sets offer insight into the reliability of long-term trend forecasting based on computer modeling projections and extrapolations, in which programmers can customize predictions by adjusting the weight of many variables. Terror-inducing forecasts and widely accepted "trends" make for sensational headlines, but they are, of late, wrong.

In August of last year’s mild, mis-forecasted 2022 hurricane season, as East Coast residents breathed a sigh of relief, PBS’s "Peril and Promise" lamented that "even in a historically quiet hurricane season like 2022, climate communicators still have work to do."

If this work entails finding new ways to assume, model or otherwise adjust numbers in ways that undermine legitimacy, "climate communicators" risk compromising public faith and safety.

In the end, smart mariners and coastal residents need to be prepared for the worst, both in terms of actual weather and the loss of critical trust in forecasters.

Franklin Raff is a USCG-licensed captain and host and co-producer of the multiple Emmy-Award® winning PBS conservation documentary “GREAT WHITE SHARK.”

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