Almost a year after Colorado’s deadly and destructive floods of September 2013, a group of NCAR scientists has just completed testing an innovative new system for detecting and predicting torrential rainfall as well as the risk of local flooding.

A case study indicates that the COSMIC microsatellite system can significantly improve predictions of tropical cyclones by using GPS radio occultation to observe remote regions of the atmosphere.

Scientists have found that internal variability can make one season twice as active as another, even when large-scale hurricane-shaping elements are unchanged. The research suggests that seasonal hurricane forecasts could be improved by conveying the amount of unavoidable uncertainty in the outlook.

More than 1,000 forecasters, researchers, and other professionals from around the globe will convene in Montréal on August 16–21 for a first-of-a-kind meeting aimed at pooling international thought on where weather prediction is headed. NCAR and UCAR participants are on tap to cover a wide range of promising developments.

The perceived gender of a hurricane’s name is just one of many factors potentially shaping how someone reacts to a given storm, according to several scientists at NCAR who take a multifaceted approach to studying hurricane response.