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Paper on tropical cyclone rapid intensification forecasting published

The paper entitled “Operational Forecasting of Tropical Cyclone Rapid Intensification at the National Hurricane Center” was published in the journal Atmosphere by M. DeMaria, with co-authors James Franklin and Matthew Onderlinde from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) and John Kaplan of the NOAA Hurricane Research Division. The paper is part of a special issue on rapid intensification (RI) and is available from on-line early release at   https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/6/683/pdf . The paper reviews the performance of NHC’s objective guidance for RI forecasting starting with the first statistical techniques implemented in 1991. Results show that the deterministic models did not have any appreciable RI forecast skill until around 2015. Since that time, the dynamical Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast (HWRF) model shows skill for the Atlantic basin and the statistical models have the most skill in the east Pacific. The probabilistic methods that treat RI as a classification problem became skillful about 5 years before the dynamical models. Several of the skillful statistical models were developed by CIRA and RAMMB researchers. The paper also introduces a new RI metric that will be used to track future progress in RI forecasting for the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP). (POC: M. DeMaria, CIRA, Mark.DeMaria@colostate.edu; Funding: HFIP)