We are at a critical moment in weather forecasting history following the devastating Hurricane Otis. The hurricane hit Acapulco with torrential rain and winds of 165mph, killing 48 people.
Otis’s rapid intensification was unprecedented. It took only 12 hours for Otis to go from a tropical storm into a category five hurricane. This is the strongest category of hurricanes and occurs very rarely.
The US National Hurricane Center described this rare and alarming storm as a “nightmare scenarios,” which broke the record for the fastest rate of intensification over 12 hours in the eastern Pacific. Otis caught both residents and authorities by surprise but also revealed the limitations of current forecasting tools.
I am a specialist in natural disasters, with the aim of improving our ability to predict them. This will ultimately save lives. We must address the urgent concerns about the tools that we use to forecast these catastrophic events while also recognizing how climate change has a significant impact on our forecasting abilities.
We rely on predictive tools.
The core of the weather forecasting process is a computer program, or “model”, which combines atmospheric variables like temperature, humidity, and wind with basic physics.
Due to the nonlinearity of atmospheric processes, even a small amount of uncertainty can cause a significant difference in forecasts. It is for this reason that the current practice is to forecast several possible scenarios rather than predicting the one most likely to happen.
On October 25, Hurricane Otis reached its peak intensity as it hit Acapulco. NOAA GOES-16/wiki
These models can be useful in issuing evacuation orders and early warnings, but they are not without limitations. They also carry a high degree of uncertainty when dealing with extreme or rare weather. The chaotic nature of the system is one factor that contributes to this uncertainty.
The historical data are incomplete because a hurricane like Otis may only occur once every few millennia. It is impossible to know the last time an east Pacific storm became a category five hurricane overnight, but we do know that it happened before satellites or weather buoys. We have never observed these “one-in-1,000-year events”, so our models are unable to take them into account.
These models must also simplify the complex physics that governs weather. This approach works well for the most common scenarios but falls short in dealing with extreme events involving rare combinations of factors and variables.
Then there are the unknown unknowns – factors that our models can’t account for, either because we don’t know about them or because they aren’t integrated into our prediction frameworks. As was the case for Hurricane Otis, unanticipated interactions between various climate drivers can lead to unprecedented intensification.
Climate change: What is it?
We can also add climate change and its impact on extremes of weather. The rise in sea surface temperature is a major factor that influences hurricanes. It gives them more energy to intensify and form.
The link between climate change, hurricane intensification, and other factors like high precipitation or high tides is becoming more clear.
It is more difficult to predict storms’ behavior and intensity due to the changing weather patterns. The historical data may not be a reliable guide.
The Way Forward
The challenges may be formidable, but they are not insurmountable. We can improve our forecasting to prepare ourselves for future uncertainties better.
First, we would develop advanced predictive models which incorporate a wider range of variables and factors. We would also consider worst-case scenarios. Artificial intelligence and machine-learning tools can be used to process large and complex datasets.
To get these additional data, we will need to invest in satellite technology, atmospheric and oceanographic research, and more weather monitoring stations.
We need to inform the public of the limitations and uncertainty in weather forecasting, since even the best experts and models are susceptible to sudden weather extremes.
Even when the predictions are uncertain, we must encourage preparedness. We must also mitigate climate change, which is the cause of increasing weather events.
Hurricane Otis was a stark reminder of the shortcomings of our current tools for predicting weather in light of climate change. It has never been more urgent to innovate and adapt in the field of weather forecasting.
We must rise to the challenge and bring in a new age of climate prediction that keeps pace with the constantly changing dynamics of our planet. Our future depends on it.