Benjamin Kirtman has developed the model Subseasonal Experiment, or SubX, to forecast the breakdown of polar vortexes in the United States. SubX combines multiple global models and could provide guidance for infrastructure preparations in advance of major weather events.

“The diversity of tools—in this case, multiple forecasts—is critical,” said Kirtman. “The diversity of prediction tools is important here because any one model has biases. If we had used only one tool that wasn’t very good at predicting the breakdown of the polar vortex, we would have missed accurately forecasting this event.”

• Benjamin Kirtman