Why the data at the heart of a hurricane matters

DESPITE advances in predicting where hurricanes are heading, forecasters are still struggling to determine a crucial factor in deciding emergency measures and evacuations: their intensity.

With a better way to predict a storm’s power, or intensity, people on the ground will be more prepared in knowing whether a hurricane headed their way will cause devastating floods and winds that can uproot trees like Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico last year, or just shake branches and rattle windows.

“The fact that we have a much better understanding of where these storms are going to go is a great first step. We sort of have half the circle filled in, and we need to get that other half filled in, which is that intensity component,” said Steve Bowen, director and meteorologist for insurer Aon Benfield’s Impact Forecasting team.

Due to warming sea and air temperatures, there is also more energy in storms, which might affect intensity predictions.

“Climate change potentially affects the frequency, intensity and tracks of tropical cyclones,” MIT climate professor Kerry Emanuel wrote in a recent academic paper.

Measuring a hurricane’s intensity quickly and formulating predictions on its changes is key to giving people on the ground time to prepare as the Atlantic hurricane season peaks this year after a devastating 2017 season.

Maria, one in a series of devastating hurricanes last year, killed an estimated 4,465 people, knocked out the electric grid and caused US$90 billion in damage in Puerto Rico.

The National Hurricane Center said last year that it failed to adequately predict the rapid intensification of Hurricane Matthew in 2016 to a Category 5 storm with maximum sustained winds of 270kph.

The storm carved a destructive path in the Caribbean, killing more than 1,000 people in Haiti, according to data gathered by Reuters.

There are more than a dozen scientific models for predicting hurricane intensity but they are of limited use, scientists say.