Hurricane science has come far since Katrina. That progress is now at risk

Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, scientists have made major advances in understanding how climate change influences tropical cyclones and in improving hurricane forecasting. Better forecasts save the country billions each time a storm makes landfall, according to a 2024 National Bureau of Economic Research analysis. The damaging 2005 season prompted creation of the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP), a federally supported research effort uniting agencies, universities, and national laboratories. Forecast accuracy has improved such that a five-day track forecast now rivals the two-day forecasts of 2005. Recent federal staffing and budget reductions threaten these gains because forecast improvements require sustained investment.

In the 20 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, hurricane scientists have made great strides toward understanding how climate change influences tropical cyclones, at the same time as they have vastly improved hurricane forecasting. Better forecasts, in turn, save the country billions every time a storm makes landfall, according to a 2024 analysis published in the National Bureau of Economic Research. But the progress didn't come out of thin air, says Gabriel Vecchi, a hurricane and climate scientist at Princeton University.

In 2005, Katrina, and other damaging storms from that era, like Rita and Wilma, spurred a concerted push to get better at forecasting hurricanes. That energy was harnessed into a federally supported research effort, called the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project, that gathered together the best scientists from across agencies, private universities and national laboratories in an effort that has continued through today.

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