Year-ahead Prediction of Hurricane Season Sea Surface Temperature in the Tropical Atlantic

TL;DR

This paper evaluates three simple statistical methods for predicting sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic a year in advance, aiming to improve hurricane number forecasts based on SST relationships.

Contribution

It introduces and compares three straightforward statistical approaches for year-ahead SST prediction in the tropical Atlantic.

Findings

One method outperformed others in predictive accuracy.

All methods showed potential for improving hurricane forecasts.

The study provides a foundation for developing SST-based hurricane prediction systems.

Abstract

One possible method for the year-ahead prediction of hurricane numbers would be to make a year-ahead prediction of sea surface temperature (SST), and then to apply relationships that link SST to hurricane numbers. As a first step towards setting up such a system this article compares three simple statistical methods for the year-ahead prediction of the relevant SSTs.