A Climatological Baseline for Assessing the Skill of Tropical Cyclone Phase Forecasts

Abstract

simple linear discriminant analysis scheme using climatological predictors is derived for the Atlantic basin as a no-skill baseline for operational phase forecasts from the National Hurricane Center (NHC). The model with independent data correctly classifies 80% of the cases at 12 h, and this value decreases to about 45% by 60 h, remaining steady thereafter. Using the same cases, NHC-issued phase predictions were more frequently accurate than the baseline, so their forecasts are said to have skill.