Predicting hurricanes

Yogi Berra said that “Predictions are very difficult, especially about the future.” This does not mean that we should not be trying to improve our predictive capabilities. During the summer and autumn, a large body of warm water with a surface temperature of more than 28 °C appears in the Gulf of Mexico. This warm water is known to provide the energy which allows hurricanes to build into hugely damaging storms. Some hurricanes, however, are much more powerful than others and Alexander Soloviev at Nova Southeastern University in Florida believes he knows why. The key, he says, is the rate at which warm water drains from this hotter area into a cooler part of the north Atlantic, a flow known as a “warm water exhaust current.” At certain times, the current cannot remove heat fast enough from the gulf and the heat energy builds up, creating conditions that are particularly favorable for intense hurricane formation.

Soloviev says that by trawling through past oceanographic records, he has found that internal waves build up in the exhaust current when the flow cannot remove heat fast enough. These are detectable using an array of oceanographic pressure sensors. The period of these waves is usually measured in days, but when this period drops to about ten hours, dangerous conditions are building. Soloviev says that by looking out for these waves, he can predict when the most dangerous hurricanes are most likely to form and so warn the authorities to take protective action.

Read the complete hurricane prediction patent application.