CAUSALITY AND PREDICTION OF ATLANTIC TROPICAL STORMS

This paper discusses the prediction of Tropical Storm occurrences in a future time scale using Bayesian and frequentist approaches.Bayesian prediction limits are calculated using an informative prior based on the data on Atlantic Tropical Storms from 1851 to 1943.We adopt a prior from the Gamma family of distributions.Our sample includes occurrences of Atlantic Tropical Storms for the period of years 1944 to 2002.Bootstrap methods are used to estimate the prior distribution.Frequentist prediction limits are also derived.Bayesian Networks are used to investigate the causal relationships between storm factors and strength and damage.