Hurricanes are one of the most destructive natural forces on the planet. Even after nearly twenty years, some areas of the southeast United States still have not recovered from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
As climate change leads to increasingly extreme weather conditions, scientists are working harder than ever to improve hurricane prediction technology. Thanks to the advancement of new technologies like artificial intelligence, 5G predictions, and edge computing, those improvements do not seem too far off.
Warning Signs of Hurricanes Detected by Technology
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), hurricane season in the East Pacific officially starts on May 15, while the Atlantic hurricane season starts on June 1. Both run through November 30. During this time, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center (NHC) is on high alert, monitoring tropical cyclones that have the potential to turn into hurricanes and cause land damage.
Detecting Hurricane Warning Signs
The earliest warning signs of hurricanes that modern technology can pick up are thunderstorms or disturbances forming over the sea, which meteorologists see with satellite data. Not all tropical disturbances turn into hurricanes, but when warm water and wind are also present, these are other clues that a hurricane might form.
Similar to watching clouds on land for cyclone formation that indicates a tornado, meteorologists use satellite data to see if a disturbance will form a closed circulation, turning it into a cyclone. Based on the speed of the winds, a storm is classified as a tropical depression, tropical storm, or hurricane. In the Northwest Pacific, hurricanes are called typhoons, and in other regions, they’re called severe tropical cyclones or cyclonic storms.
With satellites, ships, land sensors, and weather balloons flown into the cyclone, forecasters measure storm surge, sea surface temperature, size, shape, and wind speed. From this data, a hurricane prediction can be made, such as the storm’s expected path and severity.
On land, the signs of an approaching hurricane are a bit different. According to NOAA, around ninety-six hours before a hurricane hits land, ocean swells and rapid waves can be observed. At thirty-six hours, barometric pressure begins to drop and steadily continues downward as the storm approaches. Around the same time, winds begin increasing; they can reach over one hundred miles per hour in the hour before landfall. Finally, heavy rain begins around eighteen hours before the hurricane.
Future Goals
According to NOAA scientist Greg Foltz, the main goal for future technology to identify early warning signs of hurricanes is to understand how water salinity affects hurricanes, especially rapid intensification. Rapid intensification is when sustained winds increase at least thirty-five miles per hour in twenty-four hours. While uncommon, this is particularly dangerous because it is difficult to predict, and scientists worry that the rising sea surface temperature due to climate change will mean more cases.
Underwater gliders, launched by NOAA in mid-2020, seem to be the start of a solution. They were able to collect data on water temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen during two hurricanes and one tropical storm that year—valuable information that will inform future hurricane predictions. Hurricane formation depends partly on warm water, and research indicates that high heat and/or low salinity may create conditions for rapid intensification, so continuing to monitor underwater conditions may lead to more forewarning of both.
Current Challenges with Predicting Hurricanes
Scientists face many challenges to hurricane forecasting, and the issue seems to be growing on multiple fronts. Lack of funding has been a challenge for many years, and the issue has now become entwined with the politization of climate change, leading to issues not only with maintaining the forecasting technology but also with convincing politicians and civilians alike to take hurricane predictions seriously.
The Technological Limitations of Predicting Hurricanes
While hurricane prediction technology has undoubtedly come a long way, there are still many limitations in the type and amount of data researchers can collect, especially when it comes to the storm’s intensity, which can change quickly and drastically. And though new solutions are on the rise, like those created by higher 5G networking speeds, expert predictions vary on when and if they can be effectively deployed.
Beyond this, technical issues with the equipment itself has proven to be an ongoing problem. Buoys in the middle of the ocean are difficult to reach to repair if they break, data can be lost due to computer malfunctions, and sometimes budget constraints lead to a lack of action.
A large part of the difficulty with maintaining technological equipment is that the NHC has long lacked adequate, consistent funding both from the government and NOAA itself. In one notable instance in 2015, NOAA cut the budget for its Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project by more than half despite its significant success in improving forecast accuracy.
Governmental and Political Challenges
Government funding for bodies such as NOAA has been a long-standing issue. Most recently, the Trump administration requested severe budget cuts to NOAA. In the 2016 presidential election, skepticism of scientific consensus became a political flashpoint, and 2017 saw unprecedented polarization and politicization in responses to hurricane warnings. A study in Science Advances specifically examined the effects of partisanship on hurricane response in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election. It found that Hurricane Irma saw a statistically significant disparity in evacuations between Trump voters compared to Clinton voters.
In the years since, belief in the government’s severe weather warnings has remained notably low and tied to partisanship. Though NOAA has successfully gained increased funding for 2022, many government officials are reluctant to take a strong stance on severe weather phenomena because such events have become linked to the climate change debate.
Though political polarization has increased in recent years, government inaction regarding hurricane preparedness and relief is not new. Following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Congress released a bipartisan House report called A Failure of Initiative, which detailed widespread confusion and missteps that impacted the federal government’s response. Despite the NHC’s forecasting, federal officials delayed action and spread misinformation to the public.
The Effect of Climate Change
Aside from the political debate and its impact on funding, climate change also affects hurricane prediction efforts directly. Researchers’ ability to predict hurricane formation and movement is largely based on the data gathered from past events—most importantly, the weather conditions surrounding the hurricane. However, because climate change has led to rapidly changing and abnormal weather, the conditions that past models were based on no longer apply, making accurate predictions more difficult.
To counter this, researchers are pursuing technologies to keep models continuously updating rather than static. Continuous data from an internet of sensors allows for dynamic modeling, providing quick updates on current weather changes as well as adding new data for future predictions.
National Hurricane Center Forecast and Warning Products in Use Today
The NHC is the part of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction and the subunit of NOAA that focuses on forecasting, monitoring, and analyzing tropical cyclones. It is located in Miami, Florida, where it shares a building with the National Weather Service Forecast Office on the campus of Florida International University.
The main goals of the NHC are to reduce loss of life, property damage, and economic impact from hurricanes. The information it provides is used to advise meteorological and public safety services across the United States and even globally.
National Hurricane Center’s Forecasting Technologies
Since 1990, the NHC’s Technology and Science Branch has continued to use and update the Automated Tropical Cyclone Forecasting System. This software remains the primary forecasting tool used in the United States.
This system, along with an intensity forecast determined by many different models, is used to monitor and predict tropical weather outlook around the world. These models are the result of global cooperation and data sharing—not only in terms of the actual data itself but the technology advancements used to obtain it.
Forecasting and Warning Product Development
The NHC’s Technology and Science Branch is responsible for developing and updating a number of forecasting and warning products, ranging from operational graphics on the NHC website to the text and voice broadcasts sent to warn ships of storm conditions.
On the public safety front, the Hurricane Specialist Unit and Storm Surge Unit are responsible for creating text advisories, administering trainings and educational programs, and developing evacuation procedures. The most important of these products is the early warning system, which can reach nearly the entire population rapidly with updates and warnings about hurricane activity.
Latest Hurricane Prediction Technology in Development
As quickly as technology advances, researchers are finding ways to apply it to hurricane forecasting. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning to make a better hurricane model and more accurate predictions is now standard. These are used in combination with other new technologies, enabling high hopes for continued progress.
Recent Developments in Hurricane Prediction Technology
With the amount of information gathered both from current sensors and past hurricane events, big data analysis and decision-making technologies have been crucial in generating faster and more accurate predictions.
Researchers are also currently investigating the use of digital twins for hurricane prediction. Using a combination of data from ground sensors and aerial imagery, digital models of geographical areas can be formed and updated in real time. This not only helps monitor current weather conditions in the event of a tropical cyclone, but it also shows natural land barriers like forests that could affect a hurricane’s trajectory. By running simulations based on data from prior storms, these live models can collect more information to use in future predictions.
The accuracy of these models will also allow for digital training, where forecasters can input conditions into a virtual environment to better understand how a real storm would behave under them.
Another new piece of technology, debuted in 2021, is hurricane hunting drones. Drones can fly where manned planes cannot to collect valuable data—close to the surface of the ocean, the boundary layer between the sea and storm, where they are exposed to hundred-mile-per-hour winds and waves over twenty feet high.
The Future of Hurricane Prediction Technology and the Role of 5G
When considering the amount of data continuously being sent from sensors and satellites, it becomes apparent that 5G’s bandwidth capabilities are necessary to analyze data and make predictions as quickly as possible.
While 5G has the potential to handle hugely increased amounts of data in real time, a second problem arises with the issue of how the data will be processed. Because data is stored using cloud technology, it must be continuously sent and retrieved for use. This is especially true when artificial intelligence comes into play.
However, the advent of the edge ecosystem may offer a solution. Edge computing promises to reduce latency by bringing computational capabilities closer to the end user, hosting them within the network or machine itself rather than in the cloud. As well as exploring edge computing, scientists are looking toward the capabilities of quantum computers to quickly solve the complex problems that hurricane forecasting can present. This change from storing data in the cloud to in the network could prove invaluable. The application of a host network could also help transmit warning products and data to and from previously inaccessible rural areas.
While there are some very real questions left about their accessibility and usefulness, the future of hurricane prediction technology is bright with the potential for 5G networks, edge computing, and quantum computers to work together for faster, more accurate data analysis and predictions.
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