Yesterday, I blogged about the latest forecast of Atlantic seasonal hurricane activity. Tropical Storm Risk is predicting a pretty bad year. Hurricane expert Jeff Masters, though, isn't quite as pessimistic. Looking at the sea-surface temperatures this year and comparing them to the SSTs in February of 2005--just before the hurricane season that shattered all records--Masters finds that
...SST were about 0.5 ºC warmer in February 2005 vs. February 2007 in the region we care about--the hurricane Main Development Region (MDR) between 10 ºN and 20 ºN extending from Africa to the Central American coast.
Based upon this, Masters issues a kind of forecast of his own:
The best guess right now is that SSTs will be above normal this hurricane season, but nothing like observed in 2005. Based on this expectation, plus the demise of El Nino, and the fact we are in an active hurricane period that began in ...
