A new empirical approach for the seasonal prediction of annual Atlantic tropical storm number （ATSN） was developed using precipitation and 500 hPa geopotential height data from the preceding January February and April May.The 2.5°×2.5° resolution reanalysis data from both the US National Center for Environmental Prediction/the National Center for Atmospheric Research （NCEP/NCAR） and the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting （ECMWF） were applied.The model was cross-validated using data from 1979 2002.The ATSN predictions from the two reanalysis models were correlated with the observations with the anomaly correlation coefficients （ACC） of 0.79 （NCEP/NCAR） and 0.78 （ECMWF） and the multi-year mean absolute prediction errors （MAE） of 1.85 and 1.76,respectively.When the predictions of the two models were averaged,the ACC increased to 0.90 and the MAE decreased to 1.18,an exceptionally high score.Therefore,this new empirical approach has the potential to improve the operational prediction of the annual tropical Atlantic storm frequency.
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