Skill improvement of the yearly updated reforecasts in ECMWF S2S prediction from 2016 to 2022

Abstract

Hazardous weather events are often accompanied by subseasonal processes, but the forecast skills of subseasonal prediction are still limited. To assess the skill improvement of the constantly updated model version in ECMWF subseasonal-seasonal (S2S) prediction from 2016 to 2022, the performance of yearly updated reforecasts was evaluated against ERA5 reanalysis data using the temporal anomaly correlation coefficient (TCC) as a metric. The newly updated reforecasts exhibit stable superiority at the weather scale of the first two weeks, regardless of whether the 2-m temperature or precipitation forecast is being considered. At the subseasonal time scale starting from the third week, some slight improvements in prediction skills are only found in several tropical regions. Generally, the week-3 TCC values averaged over global land grids still reflect an advancement in prediction skills for updated reforecasts. For the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO), reforecasts can reproduce the characteristics of eastward propagation, but there are deviations in the intensity and propagation range of convection anomalies for reforecasts of all seven years. Based on an evaluation of MJO prediction skill using the bivariate anomaly correlation coefficient and bivariate root-mean-square error, some differences are apparent in the MJO prediction skills among the updated reforecasts, but the improvements do not increase monotonically year by year. Despite the inherent limitation of S2S prediction, positive progress has already been achieved via the constantly updated S2S prediction in ECMWF, which reinforces the confidence in further collaboratively improving S2S prediction in the future.

摘要

在2016年至2022年间, ECMWF次季节预测系统不断升级并逐年完成新的回报试验. 本文考察该预测系统逐年升级带来的预测技巧提升潜力. 从2米气温和降水来看, 在起报之后的前两周内天气尺度上预测技巧表现出逐年稳定提升的趋势; 在从第三周开始的次季节时间尺度上, 预测技巧的提升仅限于热带部分区域. MJO预测技巧并不随着模式升级而逐年单调提升. 尽管目前S2S预测技巧存在局限性, 但目前已有的进展增强了在未来深入合作以提高S2S预测技术的信心.