Seasonal Forecast of tropical cyclone activity
over the western North Pacific

Since 2000, the Laboratory for Atmospheric Research at City University of Hong Kong have been issuing real-time predictions of the annual number of tropical cyclones affecting the western North Pacific. Verifications of the predictions have shown that the predictions are mostly correct within the error bars.

Beginning in 2008, these forecasts will be issued by the Guy Carpenter Asia-Pacific Climate Impact Centre.

Western North Pacific

These are all statistical predictions with predictors drawn from a large group of indices that represent the atmospheric and oceanographic conditions in the previous year up to the spring of the current year. The most prominent ones include the proxies for El Niño/Southern Oscillation, the extent of the subtropical ridge, and the intensity of the India-Burma trough.

Important Note:

The TC activity over the western North Pacific has a significant decreasing trend in recent years. Our prediction scheme, which was first developed in 1997, with an improvement in 2001, however does not incorporate this trend and therefore overestimated the TC activity during the last few years. The prediction scheme is currently under revision and we will not issue the forecasts for the TC activity over the western North Pacific from the 2012 season.

In addition, starting from the 2014 season, we will be putting out an experimental seasonal forecast using a regional climate model. Details can be found in the Latest Forecast section below.