Pacific Tropical Cyclone Verification Trends Related to the Evolution of the Most Impactful Meteorological Tools

A forecast verification is an evaluation of what was predicted versus what phenomena occurred, based on a set of parameters. After each hurricane season, the Annual Tropical Cyclone Verification Report is produced by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) which details the prediction errors, forecast skill, and model statistics for all storms in the Central/Northeastern Pacific and Atlantic regions. A tropical cyclone’s predicted strength and intensity is verified using the cyclone's one minute surface wind speed and central position from their "best track" database. The temporal forecast windows that are evaluated in this study are the 120 hour (5 day) and 48 hour (2 day) outlooks. Error and skill data from 2001 to 2022, for both intensity and track, were taken from the NHC’s Forecast Verification Archive and NHC Official Forecast error database. Statistical tests were performed on data in time series utilizing Excel and Python. Graphing this data shows there is an increase in forecast skill and decrease in error over time, incentivizing research to identify which meteorological tools are most impactful on these trends in the Pacific region. A list of potential tools was aggregated by investigating standardized instrumentation utilized by the National Weather Service. Forecasters at the Central Pacific Hurricane Center were also interviewed about the functionality and application of some tools, which went into their evaluation. To identify the most impactful tool, all were evaluated based on 3 factors: spatial scale accessibility, type of observations recorded, and accuracy. After concluding that satellites were the most impactful, the verification trends and satellite history were compared to determine if a relationship exists. Additionally, the following research will explore the potential causes for some anomalies in the error and skill data. By identifying a piece of instrumentation that is most useful for this region, more funds and research may be allocated toward this instrumentation, resulting in higher quality observations to create more accurate forecasts.