Could the Consensus on This Year's Hurricane Season Be Wrong Again?

The mainstream media have been citing climate-prediction sources to establish “consensus” on a severe hurricane season this summer with a possible record-breaking number of storms striking the continental U.S. The main impetus for this news, of course, is a hopeful opportunity on their behalf for a new push for Global Warming agendas. After all, the President and liberals in Congress have been stymied in their efforts to institute wide-sweeping climate change reform (cap-and-trade) by the recent scandals involving manufactured evidence by Global Warming “researchers”, most notably the debacle at East Anglia. Despite a woeful record in predicting hurricane activity, this year’s galvanization of opinion is stronger than ever.

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From AccuWeather.com on April 8:

AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center meteorologists, led by Chief Long-Range Meteorologist and Hurricane Forecaster Joe Bastardi, are calling for a much more active 2010 season with above-normal threats on the U.S. coastline. “This year will be an extreme season,” said Bastardi, who is forecasting eight U.S. landfalls. “Five will be hurricanes and two or three of the hurricanes will be major landfalls for the U.S.

From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on May 27:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency of the National Hurricane Center, released an especially bullish forecast. They’re predicting up to 23 names storms with up to 14 becoming hurricanes, 7 of which are major. That’s an incredibly active year considering the Atlantic basin sees about 10 names storms a year.

From the National Hurricane Center May 27:

Known climate signals and evolving oceanic and atmospheric conditions, combined with dynamical model forecasts, indicate a high likelihood of above normal activity during the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season. This outlook calls for an 85% chance of an above-normal season, only a 10% chance of a near-normal season, and a 5% chance of a below normal season.

From Reuters on June 2:

The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season will be even more active than feared, leading U.S. forecasters said on Wednesday as they predicted 10 hurricanes, five of them major, with a 76 percent likelihood that a major hurricane would hit the U.S. coastline. Increasing a previous estimate for a “very active” season, the leading CSU storm research team founded by hurricane forecast pioneer William Gray said the six-month season beginning on June 1 would likely see 18 named tropical storms.

From the Daily Green on June 30:

Forecasters are unanimous in their assessment of the 2010 hurricane season: It is likely to be a dangerously active storm season, on par with 2005, the worst hurricane season on record.

We are now a quarter of the way into the hurricane season and we have seen only one named storm in the Atlantic. We are now seeing the emergence of a stronger-than-normal Saharan Air Layer (SAL) that has blanketed much of the eastern and central Atlantic Ocean. This extremely dry and dusty layer of air suppresses the formation of tropical cyclones by promoting strong downdrafts around storms and cutting off moisture sources. The SAL is extensive right now, extending all the way across the ocean to Cuba. While most SALs last only a few days, large ones such as we see now often take weeks to dissipate. This renders the usually busy intertropical convergence zone free of storms for the rest of this month.

August and September are the peak months for hurricane development in this part of the world and the SAL will be less prominent by that time. But the loss of June and July digs a big hole in the forecasts of a record-breaking hurricane season. The mainstream media have been all over the above-normal seasons, but seem to forget all about the less active ones. Moreover, they have failed to point out how many times the consensus among forecasters has been wrong. From the perspective of the global warming issue, we must remain cognizant of the fact that predictions of above-average numbers of hurricanes (presumably the result of global warming) are not quite the same as actually seeing them come to fruition.