Why are there Two Hurricane Models, the European Model and the American Model when physics and statistics are the same everywhere?

Question

Why are there Two Hurricane Models, the European Model and the American Model when physics and statistics are the same everywhere?

In: 293

Answer 1

Models as complicated as the ones used for predicting the behavior of weather systems are *extremely* complex, and for a “perfect” model would require an immense amount of processing power, time, and an unrealistic amount of data to feed into the model.

Thus, the only way to make the models functional is to make assumptions about the physics and use the models to provide a “best-guess” of a weather system’s behavior. If you have two different models with different core assumptions, then you can end up with different results.

The European model is generally a “stronger” model in that it makes less assumptions/more valid assumptions, but the cost of this is that it also requires a much more powerful computer to run than the American model.