Paris - This year is likely to be another bad one for hurricanes, according to an early forecast issued on Wednesday by a scientific team that last year accurately predicted the 2005 storm season would be major.
Tropical Storm Risk said there was an 80-percent probability that 2006 would be in the top one-third of the most active seasons for Atlantic tropical storms in the record books.
The prediction is based on climate data that give early pointers to the main drivers of the hurricane season, the British-based organisation said in a forecast summary released to the media.
These drivers are the speed of the trade winds in the Caribbean and tropical North Atlantic, which determine the vorticity (spinning up) of hurricanes; and the sea surface temperature in the tropical North Atlantic, which provides the heat and moisture that are the storms' raw power.
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The hurricane season officially runs from June 1 to November 30.
But the 2005 season was the longest on record, finishing on January 6, and there were so many storms that weather monitors had to draw on a reserve list of names to designate them.
It was also the most damaging season on record, causing insured losses of $50-billion, according to TSR's figures. Hurricane Katrina, which hit Louisiana and Mississippi, was responsible for 38 billion dollars of this.
TSR is a consortium that combines resources from the insurance industry with scientific expertise from the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at University College London.
In 2005, TSR warned on June 8 that the Atlantic faced a major hurricane season, although this prediction still fell short of the mark. It predicted eight hurricanes, whereas 14 occurred.
In its latest forecast, TSR also predicts eight hurricanes for 2006, with four of them developing into "intense" hurricanes. The statistical norms over the past 56 years are 6.2 and 2.7 respectively.
The forecast says, however, that the storm season in the Northwest Pacific, which historically gets underway from early May, will be "close to average", with 27 tropical storms, of which 17 will develop into typhoons. - Sapa-AFP
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