Science AMA Series: Hello Redditors! I’m Dr. Gerry Bell, a meteorologist in the Climate Prediction Center at NOAA’s National Weather Service, I lead teams of scientists at NOAA who predict the Atlantic, eastern Pacific and central Pacific hurricane seasons every year. Ask Me Anything!

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Hello Reddit!

I’m Dr. Gerry Bell, a hurricane climate specialist and research meteorologist with NOAA's National Weather Service at the Climate Prediction Center. My research into the climate factors that control seasonal hurricane activity helped NOAA launch the first seasonal Atlantic hurricane outlook in 1998. Since then, I've been the lead scientist on the team that predicts Atlantic hurricane seasons and lead author of the annual hurricane outlook. I've spent a great deal of my professional career researching, publishing, and lecturing on the science of Atlantic hurricane activity, primarily the factors that fuel or hinder storm development.

Each year, we monitor global climate patterns and use advanced computer models to predict how many named storms will form in the Atlantic, how many will become hurricanes (Category 1-2), and how many will become major hurricanes (Category 3-5). While our team can't predict how many hurricanes will make landfall, the seasonal outlook provides a general idea of whether the season will be slow or active based on climate patterns running in the background and influencing storm development. It also provides everyone in hurricane-prone areas with a great opportunity to get prepared.

On May 27, in fact, we issued our 2016 Atlantic hurricane season outlook. It calls for a near-normal season with a 70-percent likelihood of 10-16 named storms and 4-8 hurricanes, of which 1-4 could be major hurricanes. The announcement is available on NOAA.gov at http://ift.tt/1TEY6y1.

I’ll be here from 1:00 pm EDT to 3:00 pm EDT today answering your questions about our predictions for this year and the science behind how we make those predictions … AMA!

">Science AMA Series: Hello Redditors! I’m Dr. Gerry Bell, a meteorologist in the Climate Prediction Center at NOAA’s National Weather Service, I lead teams of scientists at NOAA who predict the Atlantic, eastern Pacific and central Pacific hurricane seasons every year. Ask Me Anything!