Refining hurricane forecasts by connecting the dots

Predictions of North Atlantic hurricane paths based on spatio-temporal data at the region of origin, off the coast of North Africa. Click image to enlarge and for more information.

By graphing points in Earth’s roiling atmosphere with the aid of the latest petascale-power technology, scientists collaborating on Department of Energy-funded research say they could improve major seasonal North Atlantic hurricane forecast reliability by more than 25 percent.

“We ask questions about the end-game of hurricanes: Where will they likely end up in 10 or 15 days?” says Nagiza Samatova, an associate professor in computer science and mathematics at North Carolina State University and a senior research scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

“We are finding local impacts using global data,” adds Alok Choudhary, Samatova’s collaborator and John G. Searle professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Northwestern University.

After a few years of sleuthing through existing climate records, their work is revealing previously unknown but predictive links between distant places that seem to recur during peak years for hurricane activity.

for more, view: DOE – Science – ASCR Discovery

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