NOAA gives early hurricane season predictions

and we still have time it will be a few more months before Noah's official hurricane season forecast comes out but we already have some Clues we expect a la n to form later this spring or summer and very warm ocean temperatures earlier today I spoke to National Hurricane Center Director Dr Michael Brennan about what to expect for the upcoming season and some of the cool new technology being used to forecast it so one of the things I'm curious about is I you know we both went to NC State's meteorology school it's a research school we love our research you're at a hurricane conference right now what's the coolest new piece of information that you've seen come out some of the things we're most excited about this year are going to be you know new technologies we're testing out on the hurricane hunter aircraft these small uas that can be launched out of the Noah P3 and can fly down near the ocean surface for a couple of hours and col collect data in an environment where we really don't have the ability to get information in any other way right at that are interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere where the hurricane is pulling that energy out of the ocean and also where some of the strongest winds are and it can get us some new data and we're getting better about getting that data to the forecasters at the Hurricane Center in real time AI artificial intelligence gets thrown around as a buzzword more and more nowadays and machine learning is certainly not something new to the meteorology Community but we do have more access to some of these AI infused per se models we have them where we get our weather model data here at w do you think that this could be a game Cher or is it just a kind of an average tool in the toolbox for meteorology but we are hoping to start evaluating some of these AI modeling techniques a lot of them have shown some uh good skill for forecasting track not so much for forecasting intensity yet so uh you know but they certainly could be beneficial and that that pace of change is is accelerating and I would not be surprised if we were starting to see improvements on those fronts in coming years no Noah has not officially released the hurricane season forecast but it's very likely that we're going to be transitioning to a la ninia pattern which results in more tropical development and we saw record warm ocean temperatures across the planet during the month of February so it looks pretty Grim is there anything that you're seeing that could maybe hold the hurricane season forecast back anything working against those factors well I I think the biggest note of caution right now is the the sort of spring time frame is sort of the lowest predictability for trying to figure out what's going to happen with the El linia cycle and we don't know again how the Atlantic Sea surface temperatures are going to change over the next few months too you know they certainly have been very warm but that can change with the pattern shift and you get more mixing and and the ssts could come down a little bit but you're right the combination of you know warm ssts in the Atlantic and a developing linia which does seem to be the most likely scenario by the time we get to the peak of the hurricane season is certainly concerning with these warm ocean temperatures they feed hurricane development and we're seeing uh you know more and more cases of rapid intensification with Atlantic hurricanes and across the globe we haven't recently seen that to be as big of an issue here on the east coast and in North Carolina as the go but do you think that is something rapid intensification that could be a bigger threat to North Carolina in the future it's possible the Gulf Coast is more sort of set up for that because storms tend to rapidly intensify early in their lifespan within the first few days of formation and we tend to get more of that formation you know in the Gulf or in the Caribbean or in the tropical Atlantic we tend to get less formation a little you know farther north towards the Carolinas for example but we could still see storms strengthened as they move across the Gulf Stream that's happened before you know and that that certainly is a risk and there may be some signs that rapid intensification is happening a little more often you know with a warming climate we're most confident in the the increasing impacts from storm surge and heavy rainfall flooding which we're already starting to see with things like sea level rise higher rainfall rates uh in a warmer atmosphere so and those water hazards are what kill the vast majority of people in tropical stor hurricanes thank you so much Dr Brennan for meeting with me you know our online hurricane section it's year round we have it up even right now to help you prepare for the weather's worst you can learn about the history of hurricanes in our state right here in the triangle as well and how to prepare your home ahead of the hurricane season go to wal.com and search hurricanes I got to say you know he did this interview at a tropical conference that he's attending right now some really cool stuff coming out new research and those probes that they're able to launch from the hurricane hunter aircraft they tested that last October in a hurricane and these are able to stay afloat gather new information for us for one to two hours that we're able to put into our weather models so I really think that has the potential to be such a game changer and they're excited about it there as well do they PL on on using those for for all of the Hurricanes that that major hurricanes that we see I think uh it just depends specifically on the Storm they're still early on and kind of launching them but I think it's another tool in the tool box that we at least have an option to use so hopefully that'll help keep us safe this season and we'll hope for the best we'll be watching it closely I think uh one of the things to watch is when we make that transition to laia that'll have a big impact on the season