Seasonal prediction of Northwest Australian tropical cyclones

The Northwest Australian tropical cyclone (TC) basin is a subbasin of the Southeast Indian Ocean basin and is the most active portion of the entire Australian region (90 – 170°E). The difficulty in completing a successful seasonal prediction of this basin is the small variability in the occurrence of TCs within the basin. Previous work on NWAUS seasonal prediction of the number of TCs and TC days, using multiple linear regression, has produced successful forecasts. Root mean square error from those forecasts of the number of TCs and TC days are 1.41 and 12.03, respectively. This study will expand on those predictions by including a full spectrum of TC metrics (e.g., Accumulated Cyclone Energy, Power Dissipation Index, Season Length) that can define the TC activity for NWAUS basin. Additionally, predictions will be done using simple linear (e.g., multiple linear regression) and non-linear (e.g., support vector machines) statistical techniques to determine an optimal seasonal prediction scheme for the region.