Forecast skill of the Indian monsoon and its onset in the ECMWF seasonal forecasting system 5 (SEAS5)

Chevuturi, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2815-7221, Turner, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0642-6876, Johnson, S., Weisheimer, A., Shonk, J., Stockdale, T. N. and Senan, R. (2021) Forecast skill of the Indian monsoon and its onset in the ECMWF seasonal forecasting system 5 (SEAS5). Climate Dynamics, 56 (9-10). pp. 2941-2957. ISSN 0930-7575 doi: 10.1007/s00382-020-05624-5

Abstract/Summary

Accurate forecasting of variations in Indian monsoon precipitation and progression on seasonal timescales remains a challenge for prediction centres. We examine prediction skill for the seasonal-mean Indian summer monsoon and its onset in the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) seasonal forecasting system 5 (SEAS5). We analyse summer hindcasts initialised on 1st of May, with 51 ensemble members, for the 36-year period of 1981—2016. We evaluate the hindcasts against the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) precipitation observations and the ECMWF reanalysis 5 (ERA5). The model has significant skill at forecasting dynamical features of the large-scale monsoon and local-scale monsoon onset tercile category one month in advance. SEAS5 shows higher skill for monsoon features calculated using large-scale indices compared to those at smaller scales. Our results also highlight possible model deficiencies in forecasting the all-India monsoon rainfall.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/95213
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > NCAS Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	Springer
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