Q & A with Dr. Jeff Masters of Weather Underground

[yzerfan]

http://tinyurl.com/gvrxc

A little bit from it:

The Daily News recently interviewed Masters via e-mail about the coming hurricane season, and other topics of tropical weather interest. Here’s what he had to say to Emerald Coast residents:

Q.: The $64,000 question, at least for people along the Emerald Coast here in Northwest Florida, is: What can we expect of the hurricane season in 2006? Specifically, do you have any feel for the number of named storms in 2006? Do you have a feel for how many storms will reach the intensity of 2005’s notorious Katrina, Rita and Wilma?

A.: The active hurricane period that began in 1995 should continue this year, since there is no strong El Nino event present, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are .5 to 1.5 degrees C above normal across the tropical Atlantic, and the other four indicators we look at to predict seasonal hurricane activity are all positive. However, SSTs are nearly 1 degree cooler than last year’s record levels, so I am not expecting another 2005. That was a once-in-a-lifetime year. My worst-case scenario calls for another year like 2004, with 15 to 20 named storms, and two to four major hurricanes hitting the U.S. My best-case scenario is still for an active year with 15 or so named storms, but with most of the storms recurving harmlessly out to sea. This happened in 1995, when the Bermuda High set up shop further east than usual, allowing the storms to recurve before hitting the coast. There will probably be at least three Category 4 or 5 hurricanes this year, and I expect one of these will make it into the top 10 list for most intense Atlantic hurricanes on record. I don’t look for anything like 2005, when three of the six most intense hurricanes on record occurred.

[CHRISTY]

Thanks for posting this....Jeff Masters is awsome ive been a member of wunderweather for a while now!

[NONAME]

Me to What is your Name thing my in NONAME4 also what do you think of Stormtop

[CHRISTY]

Me to What is your Name thing my in NONAME4 also what do you think of Stormtop

He's done some pretty good forcast!

[NONAME]

He is very rude and concede though but it seems like he know some stuff. i think he got lucky with Katrina and his Emily ones were horrible though he had it hit about were rita did i think as a 4-5 something like that. last week he thought that upperlow in the gulf was going to become tropical and it never did so I dont know what to think of him much right now im not impressed

[CHRISTY]

He is very rude and concede though but it seems like he know some stuff. i think he got lucky with Katrina and his Emily ones were horrible though he had it hit about were rita did i think as a 4-5 something like that. last week he thought that upperlow in the gulf was going to become tropical and it never did so I dont know what to think of him much right now im not impressed

yea i read what he was forcasting about the upperlow!Conditions are unfavorable in the gulf for the time being.

[x-y-no]

He answered this question exactly right, IMHO:

Q.: Lately a debate has sprung up among meteorologists about global warming and its relationship to hurricane formation. In your blog you have made a point of stressing the jury is still out on such a relationship. The evidence so far seems inconclusive one way or the other. Do you have a personal opinion about such a relationship?

A.: There’s no doubt that there is an effect. Hurricanes are heat engines, and heating up the oceans makes stronger hurricanes. However, the amount of heating of the oceans we can blame on global warming, about 1 degree Fahrenheit, should (according to Dr. Emanuel’s theory) cause at most a 2-3 mph increase in the winds of a storm like Katrina.

Is the theory wrong? That’s a question that is being seriously considered, and it is possible that global warming has made the strongest hurricanes much stronger than the theory would suggest. My opinion is that it its too early to tell. The database of global hurricane intensities is deeply flawed and doesn’t extend over a long enough period of time to determine if there has been a significant increase in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes due to global warming.

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

"The database of global hurricane intensities is deeply flawed and doesn’t extend over a long enough period of time to determine if there has been a significant increase in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes due to global warming. "

Exactly right!

[ronjon]

Webster and others (2005) indicated that CAT 4-5 hurricanes had almost doubled between 1975-1989 and 1990-2003 globally and they attributed this to global warming. Phil Klotzbach from CSU recently publised a paper (link below) that blows Webster's findings out of the water. He examined trends in CAT 4 & 5 storms over the last 20 years and found no global increase in intense storms. The biggest hole in Webster's data is that he heavily relied upon the west Pacific ocean storms (which have the most intense hurricanes of all basins) to provide the majority of evidence to support his theory. However, the early record (1975-1989) is deeply flawed because the intensity forecasts were mostly based on Satellite estimated intensity's and the simple fact is that the Satellites weren't very good (low resolution, Davorak method not invented till 1984) for estimating hurricane intensity back then.

Klotzbach's conclusions:

These findings are contradictory to the conclusions
drawn by Emanuel [2005] and Webster et al. [2005].
They do not support the argument that global TC
frequency, intensity and longevity have undergone
increases in recent years. Utilizing global ‘‘best track’’
data, there has been no significant increasing trend in
ACE and only a small increase (
10%) in Category 4–5
hurricanes over the past twenty years, despite an increase
in the trend of warming sea surface temperatures during
this time period.

http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/In ... ch2006.pdf

[Aslkahuna]

There's a mistake in the the last post. The Dvorak Technique was originally implemented in WPAC in the 1970's following Vernon Dvorak's original paper. I know because I did some Dvorak reports for JT when I was at Clark AB after we got the DMSP readout van in 1975 (the DMSP birds had 1 km resolution on the visual imagery back then). The current version of the Dvorak analysis is what came out in 1984 which also uses IR imagery instead of just visual as the original technique did. The problem with the WPAC database arises with the wind/pressure relationship developed and implemented by JT in 1977 and the assigning of intensities/pressures to the various T number Dvorak categories. In addition the RSMC-JMA, now the official warning center for WPAC uses a totally different relationship than JT and one that doesn't even allow for any storm over 135kt with a T8.0 storm. It is inconsistencies like this as well as the even shabbier condition of the Southern Hemisphere and Indian Ocean/Arabian Sea databases that make it impossible to categorically state beyond a doubt that GW has caused a Global increase in storm intensities.

Steve

[Tstormwatcher]

Me to What is your Name thing my in NONAME4 also what do you think of Stormtop

I was on there when Stormtop was making all of his predictions. he was rude, arrogant and would curse you out if you questioned him and his forecast, which I did. Every storm that formed and ones that didn't were predicted to hit either florida or NO as cat 4 or 5's. Katrina was his last storm, he predicted at landfall a 180mph monster with a direct hit on NO, thats where he lived by the way. he never made a pediction after that and hardly ever posted again. he is not missed.