Science Café Fort Collins — June 11, 2008

Location	Starry Night Espresso Cafe at 112 South College Street
Led by	Philip J. Klotzbach, CSU Atmospheric Science
Topic:	The 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Forecast – Here’s the Latest!

On December 7, Philip Klotzbach and William Gray issued their Extended Range Forecast of Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Activity and US Landfall Strike Probability for 2008. At that time, they foresaw a somewhat above-average tropical cyclone season for 2008 (13 named storms), with above-average probability of a major hurricane landfall in the United States.

An update will be issued on June 3, so we will hear the latest predictions and find out how they are made, what their rate of accuracy has been, and whether we should take a trip to Florida or the Gulf Coast this summer!

Meet Philip J. Klotzbach
PHILIP J. KLOTZBACH is a Research Scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. He recently received his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from CSU. Klotzbach has been employed in the Department of Atmospheric Science for the past seven years where he has been co-author on the Atlantic basin hurricane forecasts with Dr. William Gray. He became first author on the seasonal hurricane forecasts in 2006.

Klotzbach graduated with a 4.0 GPA from Bridgewater State College with a BS degree in Geography in 1999. He then attended Colorado State University where he received his Masters degree in Atmospheric Science in 2002. After receiving his Masters degree in 2002, Klotzbach thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine (2100+ miles). He has also climbed all 55 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado.

He developed the Landfalling Hurricane Probability Webpage (available online at http://www.e-transit.org/hurricane) in partnership with the GeoGraphics Laboratory at Bridgewater State College. This webpage provides hurricane landfall probabilities for 11 regions, 55 sub-regions and 205 coastal counties from Brownsville, Texas to Eastport, Maine. Since the webpage went online on June 1, 2004, it has received over 500,000 hits. Klotzbach has been an invited speaker at several conferences including the National Hurricane Conference, the Bahamas Weather Conference, the Florida Governor’s Hurricane Conference, the Institution of Structural Engineers-Caribbean Division Hurricane Conference, the Northeast Hurricane Conference, the Resort Hotel Association Annual Conference, and the MDA Earthsat Energy Weather Conference. Besides tropical cyclones, Klotzbach’s other research interests include climate change and nor’easters. He has had several research papers published in scholarly journals including papers published in the American Meteorological Society’s journals Weather and Forecasting and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.