Excessive Momentum and False Alarms in Late‐Spring ENSO Forecasts

Tippett, Michael K.; L'Heureux, Michelle L.; Becker, Emily J.; Kumar, Arun

doi:10.1029/2020gl087008

i

Excessive Momentum and False Alarms in Late‐Spring ENSO Forecasts

Supporting Files

2020
By Tippett, Michael K. ; L'Heureux, Michelle L. ; Becker, Emily J. ; ...

Details

Journal Title:

Geophysical Research Letters
Personal Author:

Tippett, Michael K. ; L'Heureux, Michelle L. ; Becker, Emily J. ; Kumar, Arun
NOAA Program & Office:

NWS (National Weather Service) ; CIMAS (Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies) ; CPC (Climate Prediction Center) ; NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction)
Description:

The unanticipated stalled El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) evolution of 2014 raises questions about the reliability of the coupled models that were used for forecast guidance. Here we have analyzed the skill and reliability of forecasts of the Niño 3.4 tendency (3-month change) in the North American multimodel ensemble (1982–2018). We found that forecasts initialized April–June (AMJ) have“excessive momentum” in the sense that the forecast Niño 3.4 tendency is more likely to be a continuation of the prior observed conditions than it should be. Models tend to predict warming when initialized after observed warming conditions and cooling when initialized after observed cooling conditions. Excessivemomentum appears in AMJ forecast busts and false alarms including the 2014 one. In some models, excessive momentum appears to be related to model formulation rather than initialization. A concerning
Keywords:

General Earth And Planetary Sciences Geophysics General Earth And Planetary Sciences General Earth And Planetary Sciences
Source:

Geophysical Research Letters, 47(8)
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1029/2020gl087008
ISSN:

0094-8276 ; 1944-8007
Format:

PDF
Publisher:

American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Document Type:

Journal Article
License:

https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
Rights Information:

CC0 Public Domain
Rights Statement:

This article has been contributed to by US Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.
Compliance:

Library
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha256:ce8416b094feaf6f88acbddfbb0da5669a35fb90ac37bcf930a4855a4cd2fc70
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/54881/noaa_54881_DS1.pdf
File Type:

[PDF - 3.21 MB ]

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