High-tech advancements improve forecasts' accuracy

One of the new satellites used by hurricane forecasters to increase accuracy. For all the incredible technology at our fingertips, there is always more to learn about tropical storms and hurricanes. Indeed, tropical forecasting has been one of the greatest challenges of the science over the last century. But today, governments around the world and individual scientists are developing new satellites, new forecast models and new methods to get inside a storm.

Tropical cyclones are enormous heat engines, using the ocean's warmth as fuel to strengthen. We've known for decades that water temperature in excess of 80 degrees Fahrenheit is supportive of tropical cyclone strengthening. Humans can't detect a 1-degree rise in water temperature, but such an increase can turn a Category 3 hurricane into a Category 4, or a Category 4 into a Category 5.

Detecting these subtle changes in the atmosphere is made easier by a widespread deployment of buoys, or floating platforms, throughout the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

In addition, satellite technology has become extremely valuable, especially over the last 10 years, as many highly specialized satellites have been launched into orbit. These are not the kind of satellites that give you the images of clouds you see on television; these satellites zoom around the Earth in relatively low orbit, sensing wind speed and direction, sea surface temperature and even how heavy rain is falling within a storm.

Within minutes of the satellite gathering this information, it is in the hands of meteorologists around the world. Supercomputer forecast models use this real-time information to aid meteorologists in forecasting.

As computers get faster and forecasters learn more, the average forecast error has been improving rapidly. Official government forecasts come from the National Hurricane Center in Miami, where forecasters began issuing five-day forecasts back in 2001. In the eight hurricane seasons since, the average error in storm location at forecast day five has dropped from 370 miles to 192 miles.

The National Hurricane Center has announced that it will eventually issue seven-day forecasts.

While storm forecasts still aren't perfect, with the explosion in technology and collaboration of meteorologists around the globe, we are able to make far more precise forecasts than we imagined just a decade ago.

— Morgan Palmer, NBC-2