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Assessment of the Capability of ENSEMBLES Hindcasts in Predicting Spring Climate in China

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Abstract

Using the hindcasts provided by the Ensemble-Based Predictions of Climate Changes and Their Impacts (ENSEMBLES) project for the period of 1980-2005, the forecast capability of spring climate in China is assessed mainly from the aspects of precipitation, 2-m air temperature, and atmospheric circulations. The ENSEMBELS can reproduce the climatology and dominant empirical orthogonal function (EOF) modes of precipitation and 2-m air temperature, with some differences arising from different initialization months. The multi-model ensemble (MME) forecast of interannual variability is of good performance in some regions such as eastern China with February initialization. The spatial patterns of the MME interannual and inter-member spreads for precipitation and 2-m air temperature are consistent with those of the observed interannual spread, indicating that internal dynamic processes have major impacts on the interannual anomaly of spring climate in China. We have identified two coupled modes between inter-member anomalies of the 850-hPa vorticity in spring and sea surface temperature (SST) both in spring and at a lead of 2 months, of which the first mode shows a significant impact on the spring climate in China, with an anomalous anticyclone located over Northwest Pacific and positive precipitation and southwesterly anomalies in eastern China. Our results also suggest that the SST at a lead of two months may be a predictor for the spring climate in eastern China. A better representation of the ocean-atmosphere interaction over the tropical Pacific, Northwest Pacific, and Indian Ocean can improve the forecast skill of the spring climate in eastern China.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the ENSEMBLES project for providing the model outputs. We also acknowledge the organizations that provided the observations for this study: the NCEP Reanalysis Derived data, NOAA_ERSST_V4 data, and GPCP precipitation data, which are provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA (at https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/). The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and thoughtful comments, which have helped improve this manuscript.

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  1. Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters/Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster, Ministry of Education/Joint International Research Laboratory of Climate and Environment Change, Nan**g University of Information Science & Technology, Nan**g, 210044, China

    Yitong Lin, Haiming Xu, **g Ma & Haijun Li

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  1. Yitong Lin
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  2. Haiming Xu
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Correspondence to Haiming Xu.

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Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41575077, 41490643, and 41805051), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFA0604102), Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), and Startup Found for Introduced Talents of Nan**g University of Information Science & Technology (2017r057).

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Lin, Y., Xu, H., Ma, J. et al. Assessment of the Capability of ENSEMBLES Hindcasts in Predicting Spring Climate in China. J Meteorol Res 33, 307–322 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13351-019-8131-0

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