During the 47th meeting of the World Meteorological Organization RA IV Hurricane Committee, an ocean panel was organized to inform on the current ocean observations efforts in the Caribbean regions and the impact of these new ocean observations on operational forecasting. Rodney Martinez – the representative for North America, Central America and the Caribbean at WMO – thanked the panelists and institutions for their valuable contributions which will lead to recommendations for the hurricane committee.

One of the contributions came from ObsSea4Clim, as Dr. Samantha Hallam (NUIM) presented her research on “TOPIM – Modelling hurricane Intensity in the Caribbean” as part of the Hurricane Committee Ocean Panel.

TOPIM stands for Tropical Cyclone Ocean-coupled Potential Intensity Model, which can predict hurricane intensity in near real-time, using ARGO floats and atmospheric sounding data, and can be used for future scenario analysis. The model demonstrates that using near real-time upper-ocean temperature (to around a depth of 100m) coupled with atmospheric data, can help develop more accurate hurricane intensity predictions.

The session was attended by 60 participants of the hurricane Committee from across the Caribbean. Visit the session details here and access Dr. Hallam’s presentation here on Zenodo.