Predictability of weather and climate

Abstract:

Following Lorenz's seminal work on chaos theory in the 1960s, probabilistic approaches to prediction have come to dominate the science of weather and climate forecasting. This paper gives a perspective on Lorenz's work and how it has influenced the ways in which we seek to represent uncertainty in forecasts on all lead times from hours to decades. It looks at how model uncertainty has been represented in probabilistic prediction systems and considers the challenges posed by a changing climate. Finally, the paper considers how the uncertainty in projections of climate change can be addressed to deliver more reliable and confident assessments that support decision-making on adaptation and mitigation. This journal is © 2011 The Royal Society.

Abstract:

The probabilistic skill of ensemble forecasts for the first month and the first season of the forecasts is assessed, where model uncertainty is represented by the a) multi-model, b) perturbed parameters, and c) stochastic parameterisation ensembles. The main foci of the assessment are the Brier Skill Score for near-surface temperature and precipitation over land areas and the spread-skill relationship of sea surface temperature in the tropical equatorial Pacific. On the monthly timescale, the ensemble forecast system with stochastic parameterisation provides overall the most skilful probabilistic forecasts. On the seasonal timescale the results depend on the variable under study: for near surface temperature the multi-model ensemble is most skilful for most land regions and for global land areas. For precipitation, the ensemble with stochastic parameterisation most often produces the highest scores on global and regional scales. Our results indicate that stochastic parameterisations should now be developed for multi-decadal climate predictions using earth-system models. Copyright 2011 by the American Geophysical Union.