Motivation

The first attempt at Atlantic tropical cyclone seasonal forecasting dates back to 1984. Performed at CSU, this first forecast utilized the state of El Niño, the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation in the stratosphere as well as surface pressures in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico to predict Atlantic hurricane activity.

More than three decades later, seasonal hurricane predictions are produced ahead of each hurricane season by a range of different groups, from the meteorological services to academic groups to catastrophe modelers, in almost all major ocean basins that support tropical cyclone formation. For the Atlantic basin alone, a large number of different groups are now producing either statistical, dynamical or hybrid statistical/dynamical seasonal predictions in the months leading up to the climatological start of the peak of the hurricane season (August 1st).

While these predictions are generally made freely available by the groups who produce them, there currently exists no website centralizing this information, making gathering that information time consuming (if one is aware of all the given predictions in the first place) and making comparisons between these different predictions difficult.

Given that the number of such predictions is likely to keep increasing in the future, we believe there is now a need for a platform where all of the information currently available in regards to upcoming seasonal hurricane activity would be centralized and displayed in such a way as to offer the best scientific estimate of upcoming hurricane activity.