Tropical cyclone track forecasting involves predicting where a tropical cyclone is going to track over the next five days, every 6 to 12 hours. The history of tropical cyclone track forecasting has evolved from a single station approach to a comprehensive approach which uses a variety of meteorological tools and methods to make predictions. The weather of a particular location can show signs of the approaching tropical cyclone, such as increasing swell, increasing cloudiness, falling barometric pressure, increasing tides, squalls, and heavy rainfall.
The forces that affect tropical cyclone steering are the higher latitude westerlies, the subtropical ridge, and the beta effect caused by changes of the coriolis force within fluids such as the atmosphere. Accurate track predictions depend on determining the position and strength of high and low pressure areas, and predicting how those areas will migrate during the life of a tropical system. Computer forecast models are used to help determine this motion as far out as five to seven days in the future.
Read more about Tropical Cyclone Track Forecasting: History, Single Station Forecasting of A Tropical Cyclone Passage, Basics, Forecast Models, Length of Forecast Period, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words tropical and/or track:
“Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If you are ambitious of climbing up to the difficult, and in a manner inaccessible, summit of the Temple of Fame, your surest way is to leave on one hand the narrow path of Poetry, and follow the narrower track of Knight-Errantry, which in a trice may raise you to an imperial throne.”
—Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)