Are hurricane models the downfall of tropical meteorology?

[Frank2]

When I worked for meteorologists many years ago, they had but a half-dozen hurricane models. They'd glance at the computes - then go back to looking at the surface and upper air maps to determine the track of a system.

Today, forecasters rely on dozens and dozens of models - all with their own solution - that forecasters seem to have forgotten what it's like to be a forecaster, much like an airline pilot at times seems to forget what it's like to fly an airplane without the help of a computer.

In my time the forecaster looked at a few qualifiers - shear, dry air, troughs (cold fronts) and cool SST, all a hindrance to cyclone formation, or minimal shear, moisture laden air, high pressure and warm SSTs that aid development - and depending on what was available, they made a forecast based on the pros and cons alone - models not being used to determine a forecast, because only a few were available.

Meteorologists are suffering from a case of too much information, and perhaps it's one reason intensity forecasting is almost non-existent, the focus on modeling taking away the skill and gift of a meteorologist to make a forecast based on data alone, since observed data is truth, unlike a computer's version of fiction since one innaccurate bit of data can corrupt an entire computer model's forecast....

Frank

[tolakram]

Every metric used to judge forecast accuracy shows a marked increase over the last 20 years. What facts are you using to show that somehow models are ruining forecasting?

This was linked in our Discord chat room, I think it's a great read an applicable here.

100 Years of Progress in Tropical Cyclone Research
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/AMSMONOGRAPHS-D-18-0016.1

[Frank2]

It's not based on individual incidents, but again it's like the airline pilot who forgets the basics of flight because he is relying too much on technology to fly the airplane.

Being a meteorologist is a lot like being a farmer or a sailor or a pilot - they must use their own good skills to determine what the weather might or might not do. I always think of the scene in the film Twister, when the good guy meteorologist says of the bad guy meteorologist something to the effect that the bad guy has the technology but not the gift (and we know what happened to the bad guy).

I'm not against technology, but we don't have a head on our shoulders just to hold up a hat.

Frank

[somethingfunny]

I'm glad that we had forecast models to let us know that Dorian would actually avoid Florida several days in advance. Our brilliant meteorologists at the NHC kept the edge of the forecast cone over the Florida coastline just in case the models had it wrong because, of course, that still does happen occasionally... but clearly the forecast models saved untold amounts of economic disruption and public distrust that would have resulted from any massive evacuation in Florida.

If our forecasters had merely "glanced at six or so models briefly" and then went back to forecasting off of human skill and experience and intuition, then Alabama might have even been in Dorian's forecast cone.

[CyclonicFury]

I would say no. Models like the SHIPS guidance and HWRF have been very useful at predicting RI events when the global models remained bearish.