Predictions and verifications that were for significantly above
the climatological average (11-19 for named storms, 7-12 for
hurricanes, 4-7 for intense hurricanes and 31-60 for hurricane
days) are indicated by underlined numbers. Those which were
below average (4-7 named storms, 2-4 hurricanes, 0-1 intense
hurricanes and 4-17 hurricane days) are noted by boldfaced
numbers. Skill of the forecasts and of predictions of
year-to-year persistence is assessed by r, the agreement coefficient (Gray et al. 1992). Significance is
for the r values is given by: ``-"
not significant, "*" significant at the 0.10 level, "**"
significant at the 0.05 level, and "***" significant at the 0.01
level.
Table 3: Prediction of the annual number of
occurrences of westward tropical cyclones in the region bounded
by 7.5°N,117.5°E and 17.5°N, 142.5°E
(i.e. the area surrounding and just to the east of the
Philippines) using 850 mb zonal winds in January and March. The
"predicted" values are obtained via a cross-validated
regression. The error of prediction is in parentheses. RMS
error = root-mean-square error (from Chan 1994).
| Year | Observed | Predicted |
| 1975 | 15 | 18(+3) |
| 1976 | 20 | 22(+2) |
| 1977 | 21 | 24(+3) |
| 1978 | 31 | 25(-6) |
| 1979 | 32 | 33(+1) |
| 1980 | 32 | 25(-7) |
| 1981 | 36 | 32(-4) |
| 1982 | 34 | 29(-5) |
| 1983 | 24 | 27(+3) |
| 1984 | 21 | 32(+11) |
| 1985 | 25 | 30(+5) |
| 1986 | 35 | 31(-4) |
| 1987 | 39 | 40(+1) |
| 1988 | 33 | 38(+5) |
| Mean | 28 | |
| Standard Deviation | 7.3 | |
| RMS Error | | 5.1 |