2025 Hurricane Forecast by Xubin Zeng and Kyle Davis
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Atlantic_hurricane_season
Xubin Zeng and Kyle Davis have announced the forecast for their 2025 Hurricane season which runs from June 1 to November 30. The prediction includes total numbers of named storms, hurricanes, major hurricanes, and accumulated cyclone energy (ACE, defined as the sum of the squares of the 6-hourly windspeeds in knots of storms at least of tropical storm strength). Their forecast combines dynamic forecasts with machine learning as informed by their physical understanding of hurricane activities:
- They utilize a Random Forest approach based on seasonal forecast data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).
- They use the forecast July/August/September tropical Atlantic area-averaged sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the same region used in their June predictions (Davis, Zeng, and Ritchie 2015; Davis and Zeng 2019) as well as August/September area-averaged SSTs in the Nino 3.4 region.
- Their method uses 25 ensemble members from 1981-2016 and 51 members from 2017-2025.
- They calibrate the model using data from 1981 to 2007: they first train the model on the first ensemble member (from the model control run) on all data from 1981 to 2007, use that model to predict for the other members over the same time period, and average predictions from all members as their prediction for that year. Then they validate the model using data from 2008 to 2024 in “real time” (for example, for 2015, they would train the model using data from 1981 to 2014 and use the 2015 SST data to make a prediction for 2015).
Table 2 (below) compares their model’s performance during the calibration and validation periods against the 5-year running average, or a no-skill metric. The model outperforms the no-skill category in all variables.
The forecast for sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic during peak hurricane season are for them to be a little above average, significantly less warm than the last couple of years. ENSO appears to be a nonfactor for this year--projections show the Niño 3.4 region to be a little above average. All this should combine to be a fairly normal year in terms of all categories -- hurricanes, major hurricanes, named storms, and ACE.
| 2025 Prediction | Probability Range | Median Since 1980 | |
| Hurricanes | 7 | 6-9 (66%) | 7 |
| Major Hurricanes | 3 | 2-4 (66%) | 3 |
| Named Storms | 15 | 12-18 (68%) | 14 |
| ACE | 110 | 70-150 (67%) | 107 |
| Table 1. 2025 tropical outlook | |||
We will update our prediction in early June 2025.
Category | Calibration | Validation | 5-yr Average |
| Named Storms | 2.6 | 3.4 | 4.3 |
| Hurricane | 1.9 | 2.2 | 2.8 |
| Major Hurricane | 1.2 | 1.1 | 1.5 |
| ACE | 43.8 | 33.6 | 43.8 |
| Table 2. Mean absolute errors of forecasts and those using the 5-year average as the prediction. All three columns use data as described above. 5-yr average is for the same period as the validation test. | |||
Find the complete report here: