An alternate approach to ensemble ENSO forecast spread: Application to the 2014 forecast

Sarah M. Larson; Ben P. Kirtman

doi:10.1002/2015GL066173

An alternate approach to ensemble ENSO forecast spread: Application to the 2014 forecast

Sarah M. Larson, Ben P. Kirtman

Atmospheric Sciences

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24 Scopus citations

Abstract

Evaluating the 2014 El Niño forecast as a "bust" may be tapping into a bigger issue, namely that forecast "overconfidence" from single-model ensembles could affect the retrospective assessment of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) predictions. The present study proposes a new approach to quantifying an "expected" spread and uncertainty from noise-driven processes and supplementing these measures with actual ENSO forecasts. Expanding on a previously developed coupled model framework that isolates noise-driven ENSO-like errors, an experimental design is implemented to generate an expected December Niño-3.4 spread from March initial condition sea surface temperature errors that have similar structure to the 2014 and 2015 observed. Results reveal that the 2014 ENSO forecast falls within the expected uncertainty generated by ENSO-independent, forecast-independent, noise-driven errors.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	9411-9415
Number of pages	5
Journal	Geophysical Research Letters
Volume	42
Issue number	21
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL066173
State	Published - Nov 16 2015

Keywords

ENSO
ensemble forecast
forecast spread
stochastic processes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Geophysics
Earth and Planetary Sciences(all)

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10.1002/2015GL066173

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An alternate approach to ensemble ENSO forecast spread: Application to the 2014 forecast

Abstract

Keywords

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