Leon Hermanson

Skillful long‐range prediction of European and North American winters

This work was supported by the Joint DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101), the UK Public Weather Service research program, and the European Union Framework 7 SPECS project. Leon Hermanson was funded as part of his Research Fellowship by Willis as part of Willis Research Network (WRN).

Do seasonal‐to‐decadal climate predictions underestimate the predictability of the real world?

Seasonal-to-decadal predictions are inevitably uncertain, depending on the size of the predictable signal relative to unpredictable chaos. Uncertainties can be accounted for using ensemble techniques, permitting quantitative probabilistic forecasts. In a perfect system, each ensemble member would represent a potential realization of the true evolution of the climate system, and the predictable components in models and reality would be equal. However, we show that the predictable component is sometimes lower in models than observations, especially for seasonal forecasts of the North Atlantic Oscillation and multiyear forecasts of North Atlantic temperature and pressure. In these cases the forecasts are underconfident, with each ensemble member containing too much noise. Consequently, most deterministic and probabilistic measures underestimate potential skill and idealized model experiments underestimate predictability. However, skilful and reliable predictions may be achieved using a large ensemble to reduce noise and adjusting the forecast variance through a postprocessing technique proposed here.

Forecast cooling of the Atlantic subpolar gyre and associated impacts

Decadal variability in the North Atlantic and its subpolar gyre (SPG) has been shown to be predictable in climate models initialized with the concurrent ocean state. Numerous impacts over ocean and land have also been identified. Here we use three versions of the Met Office Decadal Prediction System to provide a multimodel ensemble forecast of the SPG and related impacts. The recent cooling trend in the SPG is predicted to continue in the next 5 years due to a decrease in the SPG heat convergence related to a slowdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. We present evidence that the ensemble forecast is able to skilfully predict these quantities over recent decades. We also investigate the ability of the forecast to predict impacts on surface temperature, pressure, precipitation, and Atlantic tropical storms and compare the forecast to recent boreal summer climate.

Examining reliability of seasonal to decadal sea surface temperature forecasts: The role of ensemble dispersion

Useful probabilistic climate forecasts on decadal timescales should be reliable (i.e. forecast probabilities match the observed relative frequencies) but this is seldom examined. This paper assesses a necessary condition for reliability, that the ratio of ensemble spread to forecast error being close to one, for seasonal to decadal sea surface temperature retrospective forecasts from the Met Office Decadal Prediction System (DePreSys). Factors which may affect reliability are diagnosed by comparing this spread-error ratio for an initial condition ensemble and two perturbed physics ensembles for initialized and uninitialized predictions. At lead times less than 2 years, the initialized ensembles tend to be under-dispersed, and hence produce overconfident and hence unreliable forecasts. For longer lead times, all three ensembles are predominantly over-dispersed. Such over-dispersion is primarily related to excessive inter-annual variability in the climate model. These findings highlight the need to carefully evaluate simulated variability in seasonal and decadal prediction systems.Useful probabilistic climate forecasts on decadal timescales should be reliable (i.e. forecast probabilities match the observed relative frequencies) but this is seldom examined. This paper assesses a necessary condition for reliability, that the ratio of ensemble spread to forecast error being close to one, for seasonal to decadal sea surface temperature retrospective forecasts from the Met Office Decadal Prediction System (DePreSys). Factors which may affect reliability are diagnosed by comparing this spread-error ratio for an initial condition ensemble and two perturbed physics ensembles for initialized and uninitialized predictions. At lead times less than 2 years, the initialized ensembles tend to be under-dispersed, and hence produce overconfident and hence unreliable forecasts. For longer lead times, all three ensembles are predominantly over-dispersed. Such over-dispersion is primarily related to excessive inter-annual variability in the climate model. These findings highlight the need to carefully evaluate simulated variability in seasonal and decadal prediction systems.

The Representation of Atmospheric Blocking and the Associated Low-Frequency Variability in Two Seasonal Prediction Systems

AbstractPrimarily as a response to boundary forcings, certain components of the atmospheric intraseasonal variability are potentially predictable. Particularly referring to the extratropics, the current generation of seasonal forecasting systems is making advancements in predicting these components by realistically initializing many components of the climate system, using higher resolution and utilizing large ensemble sizes.The operational seasonal prediction system of the Met Office (UKMO) and the corresponding system of the Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC) are analyzed in terms of their representation of different aspects of extratropical low-frequency variability. The UKMO system achieves unprecedented high scores in predicting the winter mean phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO; correlation 0.62) and the Pacific–North American pattern (PNA; correlation 0.82). The CMCC system, despite its smaller ensemble size and coarser resolution, also exhibits significant skill (0....

Predictions of Climate Several Years Ahead Using an Improved Decadal Prediction System

AbstractDecadal climate predictions are now established as a source of information on future climate alongside longer-term climate projections. This information has the potential to provide key evidence for decisions on climate change adaptation, especially at regional scales. Its importance implies that following the creation of an initial generation of decadal prediction systems, a process of continual development is needed to produce successive versions with better predictive skill. Here, a new version of the Met Office Hadley Centre Decadal Prediction System (DePreSys 2) is introduced, which builds upon the success of the original DePreSys. DePreSys 2 benefits from inclusion of a newer and more realistic climate model, the Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model version 3 (HadGEM3), but shares a very similar approach to initialization with its predecessor. By performing a large suite of reforecasts, it is shown that DePreSys 2 offers improved skill in predicting climate several years ahead. Differenc...

Mechanisms Linking Volcanic Aerosols to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

AbstractThis study examines the sensitivity of the climate system to volcanic aerosol forcing in the third climate configuration of the Met Office Unified Model (HadCM3). The main test case was based on the 1880s when there were several volcanic eruptions, the well-known Krakatau being the largest. These eruptions increased atmospheric aerosol concentrations and induced a period of global cooling surface temperatures. In this study, an ensemble of HadCM3 has been integrated with the standard set of radiative forcings and aerosols from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report simulations, from 1860 to present. A second ensemble removes the volcanic aerosols from 1880 to 1899. The all-forcings ensemble shows an attributable 1.2-Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) increase in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) at 45°N—with a 0.04-PW increase in meridional heat transport at 40°N and increased northern Atlantic SSTs—starting around 1894, approximately 11 years after the fir...

Decadal climate prediction (project GCEP)

Decadal prediction uses climate models forced by changing greenhouse gases, as in the International Panel for Climate Change, but unlike longer range predictions they also require initialization with observations of the current climate. In particular, the upper-ocean heat content and circulation have a critical influence. Decadal prediction is still in its infancy and there is an urgent need to understand the important processes that determine predictability on these timescales. We have taken the first Hadley Centre Decadal Prediction System (DePreSys) and implemented it on several NERC institute compute clusters in order to study a wider range of initial condition impacts on decadal forecasting, eventually including the state of the land and cryosphere. The eScience methods are used to manage submission and output from the many ensemble model runs required to assess predictive skill. Early results suggest initial condition skill may extend for several years, even over land areas, but this depends sensitively on the definition used to measure skill, and alternatives are presented. The Grid for Coupled Ensemble Prediction (GCEP) system will allow the UK academic community to contribute to international experiments being planned to explore decadal climate predictability.

A Multisystem View of Wintertime NAO Seasonal Predictions

AbstractSignificant predictive skill for the mean winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Arctic Oscillation (AO) has been recently reported for a number of different seasonal forecasting systems. These findings are important in exploring the predictability of the natural system, but they are also important from a socioeconomic point of view, since the ability to predict the wintertime atmospheric circulation anomalies over the North Atlantic well ahead in time will have significant benefits for North American and European countries.In contrast to the tropics, for the mid latitudes the predictive skill of many forecasting systems at the seasonal time scale has been shown to be low to moderate. The recent findings are promising in this regard, suggesting that better forecasts are possible, provided that key components of the climate system are initialized realistically and the coupled models are able to simulate adequately the dominant processes and teleconnections associated with low-frequency variabi...

Multiannual forecasts of Atlantic U.S. tropical cyclone wind damage potential

There are strong decadal variations in Atlantic hurricane activity, with an active period in the 1950s and 1960s, a quiescent period from the 1970s through the early 1990s and a resurgence in activity since the mid-1990s. Using an index that relies on subpolar gyre temperature and subtropical sea level pressure, two quantities with links to hurricane activity, we show that it is possible to construct reliable 5 year mean forecasts of both basin-wide tropical cyclone activity as well as wind energy associated with hurricanes making landfall along the U.S. coastline. Furthermore, the index is capable of reproducing the major decadal shifts in activity observed over the last 50 years. This is the first time that a forecast system shows significant skill of a landfalling hurricane characteristic at the multiannual time scale and, as such, shows great promise as a valuable climate service product.