Open AccessA Climatological Baseline for Assessing the Skill of Tropical Cyclone Phase Forecasts
Author(s) -
Sim D. Aberson
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
weather and forecasting
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.393
H-Index - 106
eISSN - 1520-0434
pISSN - 0882-8156
DOI - 10.1175/waf-d-12-00130.1
Subject(s) - baseline (sea) , tropical cyclone , climatology , forecast skill , phase (matter) , cyclone (programming language) , meteorology , environmental science , computer science , geography , geology , physics , oceanography , quantum mechanics , field programmable gate array , computer hardware
A simple linear discriminant analysis scheme using climatological predictors is derived for the Atlantic basin as a no-skill baseline for operational phase forecasts from the National Hurricane Center (NHC). The model with independent data correctly classifies 80% of the cases at 12 h, and this value decreases to about 45% by 60 h, remaining steady thereafter. Using the same cases, NHC-issued phase predictions were more frequently accurate than the baseline, so their forecasts are said to have skill.