Detecting chaos in hurricane intensity

TL;DR

This study reveals that hurricane intensity dynamics exhibit low-dimensional chaos, setting a fundamental limit of approximately 18-24 hours for accurate intensity prediction, regardless of modeling improvements.

Contribution

It demonstrates the presence of chaos in hurricane intensity dynamics using phase-space reconstruction and chaotic invariants, establishing a predictability limit.

Findings

Hurricane intensity dynamics contain low-dimensional chaos with an intrinsic dimension of 4-5.

The error doubling time for intensity predictions is roughly 1-5 hours.

Predictability of hurricane intensity is limited to about 18-24 hours after maximum intensity.

Abstract

Determining the maximum potential limit in the accuracy of hurricane intensity prediction is important for operational practice. Using the phase-space reconstruction method for hurricane intensity time series, here we found that hurricane dynamics contain inherent low-dimensional chaos at the maximum intensity equilibrium. Examination of several chaotic invariants including the largest Lyapunov exponent, the Sugihara-May correlation, and the correlation dimension consistently captures an intrinsic dimension of the hurricane chaotic attractor in the range of 4-5. In addition, the error doubling time is roughly 1-5 hours, which accords with the decay time obtained from the Sugihara-May correlation. The confirmation of hurricane chaotic intensity as found in this study suggests a relatively short limit for intensity predictability of $\sim$18-24 hours after reaching the maximum intensity stage. So long as the traditional metrics for hurricane intensity such as the maximum surface wind or the minimum central pressure is used for intensity forecast, our results support that hurricane intensity forecast errors will not be reduced indefinitely in any modelling systems, even in the absence of all model and observational errors. As such, the future improvement of hurricane intensity forecast should be based on different intensity metric beyond the absolute intensity errors as in the current practice of intensity verification.