1Summary of 2006 Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Season and Verification of Authors ’ Seasonal Forecasts

• Main Authors: Professor Mark Saunders, Dr Adam Lea
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2007
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.595.4320; http://tsr.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/docs/TSRATL2006Verification.pdf

hurricane year. Basin activity was at the 39th percentile and US landfalling activity at the 29th percentile of years between 1950 and 2005. The TSR forecasts were unsuccessful this year, predicting that activity would be in the upper tercile historically. The poor forecasts appear to be due to the suppressing effect of dry air and Saharan dust in August and to the unexpected and rapid onset of El Niño conditions in September. The Tropical Storm Risk (TSR) consortium presents a validation of their seasonal probabilistic and deterministic forecasts for North Atlantic hurricane activity in 2006. These forecasts were issued monthly from the 6th December 2005 to the 4th August 2006. They include separate predictions for tropical storms, hurricanes, intense hurricanes and the ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy) index, each given for the following regions: North Atlantic basin, tropical North Atlantic, US landfalling and Caribbean Lesser Antilles landfalling. All forecasts greatly overpredicted the total and US landfalling activity. Features of the 2006 Atlantic Season • The 2006 Atlantic season saw 10 tropical storms, 5 hurricanes, 2 intense hurricanes and a total ACE index of 81. This is approximately 20 % below the 1950-2005 climate norm, and