Now for the first time, the CSU group has graded itself. The researchers’ statistical analysis credits their forecasts with a “modest” improvement over the baseline assumption that every season would be normal.Others concede that the group has shown some measurable skill in forecasting—just not much.The performance of the CSU forecasts has been “not too good” to “pretty bad,” says seasonal forecaster Anthony Barnston of Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society in Palisades, New York. But then, he and colleagues have done their own seasonal hurricane forecasts, and “our skills are lousy also. No one is very good at this.”
