History of tropical cyclone naming
The system currently in place provides identification of tropical cyclones in a brief form that is easily understood and recognized by the public.
This system of naming fell into disuse for several years after Wragge retired, until it was revived in the latter part of World War II for the Western Pacific.
Names are assigned in order from predetermined lists once storms have one, three, or ten-minute sustained wind speeds of more than 65 km/h (40 mph), depending on which basin it originates in.
[2][6] After the new Australian government had failed to create a federal weather bureau and appoint him director, Wragge started naming cyclones after political figures.
[1][7] During 1944, United States Army Air Forces forecasters (USAAF) at the newly established Saipan weather center, started to informally name typhoons after their wives and girlfriends.
[11] During 1947 the Air Force Hurricane Office in Miami started using the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet to name significant tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic Ocean.
[1][7][12] As a result, during the next tropical cyclone (Fox), Grady Norton decided to start using the names in public statements and in the seasonal summary.
[12][15] However, as Hurricanes Carol, Edna, and Hazel affected the populated Northeastern United States, controversy raged with several protests over the use of women's names as it was felt to be ungentlemanly or insulting to womanhood, or both.
[6][20] During 1959 the US Pacific Command Commander in Chief and the Joint Chiefs of Staff decided that the various US Navy and Air Force weather units would become one unit based on Guam entitled the Fleet Weather Central/Joint Typhoon Warning Center, which continued naming the systems for the Pacific basin.
[19][21] In January 1960, a formal naming scheme was introduced for the South-West Indian Ocean by the Mauritius and Madagascan Weather Services.
[27] During the following year, the Philippine Weather Bureau (later reorganized into PAGASA in 1972) adopted four sets of female Filipino nicknames ending in "ng" from A to Y for use in its self-defined area of responsibility.
"[6] Male names were subsequently added to the lists for the Southern Pacific and each of the three Australian tropical cyclone warning centres ahead of the 1975–76 season.
[1] During 1978 the Secretary of Commerce Juanita Kreps ordered NOAA administrator Robert White to cease the sole usage of female names for hurricanes.
[1] Robert White subsequently passed the order on to the Director of NHC Neil Frank, who attended the first meeting of the hurricane committee and requested that both men's and women's names be used for the Atlantic.
[1] The committee subsequently decided to accept the proposal and adopted five new lists of male and female names to be used the following year.
[39][40] After an agreement was reached between Mexico and the United States, six new sets of male/female names were implemented for the Eastern Pacific basin during 1978.
[41] A new list was also drawn up during the year for the Western Pacific and was implemented after Typhoon Bess and the 1979 tropical cyclone conference.
[46][47] The committee's Training and Research Coordination Group was subsequently tasked to consult with members and work out the details of the scheme in order to present a list of names for approval at the 31st session.
[55] As a result of this, the panel requested that each of the eight member countries submit a list of ten names to a rapporteur by the end of 2000.
[55][57] At the 22nd hurricane committee in 2000, it was decided that any tropical cyclone that moved from the Atlantic to the Eastern Pacific basin and vice versa would no longer be renamed,[58] provided it remained a tropical cyclone (depression, storm, or hurricane) for its entire crossing of the land mass between the basins.
[61] However, both of these proposals were rejected at the fifteenth session of the RA I Tropical Cyclone Committee for the South-West Indian Ocean during September 2001.
[77][78] As a result, it was proposed at the following year's RA I tropical cyclone committee, that systems stopped being renamed when they moved into the South-West Indian Ocean from the Australian region.
[79] On March 12, 2010, public and private weather services in Southern Brazil, decided to name a tropical storm Anita to avoid confusion in future references.
[83] In particular, it was noted that the procedure did not take into account any of the significant improvements in the science surrounding tropical cyclones and that it was biased due to inappropriate links with some national warning systems.
[83] During its twenty-third session in 2019, the committee noticed some inconsistency between the operational plan and the WMO technical regulations which defined the roles and responsibilities of tropical cyclone RSMC's.
[84] As a result, the committee decided to acknowledge the authority of RSMC La Réunion and gave them the right to name tropical cyclones.
[7] Names are assigned in order from predetermined lists once storms have one, three, or ten-minute sustained wind speeds of more than 65 km/h (40 mph) depending on which basin it originates in.
[87] Any tropical cyclone names assigned by the Papua New Guinea National Weather Service are automatically retired regardless of any damage caused.
