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Climate Prediction S&T Digest 37th NOAA Climate Diagnostics and Prediction Workshop Special Issue Fort Collins, CO Climate Prediction S&T Digest January 2013 NWS Science & Technology Infusion Climate Bulletin Supplement Inside this issue: 1. Annual review of weather & climate and climate operations 2. Improving and evaluating reanalyses and fore- NOAA’s National Weather casts Service 3. Prediction and attribution of high impact weather Office of Science and Technology and climate events 1325 East West Highway 4. Teleconnections and stratospheric impacts Silver Spring, MD 20910 5. Drought and hydroclimate monitoring and pre- Climate Prediction Center diction 5830 University Research Court 6. Global climate change impacts on seasonal varia- College Park, MD 20740 bility and prediction 7. Setting up an operational framework Although the skill of current operational climate prediction is limited and the research on the topic presents many challenges, there are promises of improvement on the horizon. To accelerate advancement in climate services, an effective mechanism of S&T infusion from research to operation for application is much needed. This bulletin has been established to clarify science-related problems and relevant issues identified in operation, helping our partners in the research community to understand which R&D activities are needed to "shoot arrows at the target". Science and Technology Infusion Climate Bulletin http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ost/climate/STIP/index.htm National Weather Service National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration U.S. Department of Commerce PREFACE It is with great pleasure that the Climate Prediction Center and the Office of Science and Technology offer you this synthesis of the 37th Climate Diagnostics and Prediction Workshop. The CDPW brought together over 100 participants to share their research results and perspectives on a broad range of climate prediction and monitoring topics. As in previous years, the CDPW included plenary sessions and poster sessions, but this year also featured coordinated activities with a “Drought Task Force” organized by the NOAA Climate Program Office and focused on challenges in drought monitoring and prediction. Thus, the CDPW continues to be an important and timely way for the climate prediction community to stay connected. As is clearly evident in this digest, the climate community continues to make major strides in the foundational research necessary to improve understanding and to advance climate prediction and monitoring capabilities. The purpose of this digest is to help keep you informed of these advances and to ensure that they are shared with the broader climate community and transitioned into operations. This is especially important as NOAA works to enhance climate services across the agency and with external partners. We hope you find this digest to be useful and stimulating. And please drop me a note if you have suggestions to improve the digest. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Jiayu Zhou of the Office of Science and Technology / NWS, for developing the digest concept and for sustaining it year after year. This partnership between OST and CPC is an essential element of NOAA climate services. Wayne Higgins Wayne Higgins Director, Climate Prediction Center National Centers for Environmental Prediction NOAA’s National Weather Service i CONTENTS 1 OVERVIEW 1 ANNUAL REVIEW OF WEATHER & CLIMATE AND CLIMATE OPERATION 2 US climate review of 2012: The hot and dry 3 Melissa Ou The current state of Arctic sea ice Gregory J. Deemer, Uma S. Bhatt, Hajo Eicken, Jennifer Hutchings, Pamela Posey, 10 Rick Allard, Gary Hufford, and Robert Raye NWS efforts to improve weather to climate based-services 13 Jiayu Zhou, Wayne Higgins, and Mike Halpert 2 IMPROVING AND EVALUATING REANALYSES AND FORECASTS 17 A comparison of skill of CFSv1 and CFSv2 hindcasts of Nino 3.4 SST 18 Anthony G. Barnston, and Michael K. Tippett Improvement of grand multi-model ensemble prediction skills for the coupled models of APCC/ENSEMBLES using a climate filter 29 Doo Young Lee, Joong-Bae Ahn, Karumuri Ashok, and Andrea Alessandri Assessing the daily and radiative performance of the CFSR, ERA-interim and MERRA 33 Wesley Ebisuzaki, Li Zhang, S. K. Yang, and Arun Kumar Combining sub-seasonal and seasonal precipitation forecasts over Indonesia 37 Andrew W. Robertson, Dong Eun Lee, Vincent Moron, and Shuhua Li Homogeneous and heterogeneous predictability and forecast skill in MME 40 Huug van den Dool, Emily Becker, and Malaquias Peña Evaluation of the National Multi-Model Ensemble System for seasonal and monthly prediction 43 Emily Becker, Qin Zhang, Huug van den Dool, Suranjana Saha, Peitao Peng, Malaquias Peña, Patrick Tripp, and Jin Huang A comparison of skill between two versions of the NCAP Climate Forecast System (CFS) and CPC’s operational short-lead seasonal outlooks 46 Peitao Peng, Anthony G. Barnston, and Arun Kumar Sea surface temperature - precipitation relationship in different reanalyses 47 Li Zhang, Arun Kumar, and Wanqiu Wang Prediction skill of monthly SST in the North Atlantic Ocean in NCEP Climate Forecast System version 2 48 Zeng-Zhen Hu, Arun Kumar, Bohua Huang, Wanqiu Wang, Jieshun Zhu, and Caihong Wen Characteristics of oceanic response to ENSO estimated from simulations with the NCEP Climate Forecast System 49 Hui Wang, Arun Kumar, and Wanqiu Wang ii 3 PREDICTION AND ATTRIBUTION OF HIGH IMPACT WEATHER AND 50 CLIMATE EVENTS Wet weeks in the warm season: Processes supporting widespread, multi-day precipitation episodes 51 Russ S. Schumacher Changes in activity of the intense tropical cyclones for the western North Pacific during the last decades, derived from a regional climate model simulation 55 Monika Barcikowska, Frauke Feser, and Hans von Storch El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the Madden-Julian Oscillation and Atlantic basin tropical cyclone rapid intensification 61 Philip Klotzbach Short-term climate extremes: prediction skill and predictability 66 Emily J. Becker, Huug van den Dool, and Malaquias Peña 4 TELECONNECTIONS AND STRATOSPHERIC IMPACTS 67 The influence of teleconnections on synoptic-scale circulation patterns affecting western Canadian water resources 68 B. W. Newton, T. D. Prowse, and B. R. Bonsal The multivariate PNA index: A new index for identifying MJO impacts over North America 72 Carl J. Schreck III, and David Margolin A teleconnection between geopotential height anomalies over the North Atlantic and precipitation in the Sahel region of Africa 76 Daniel Barandiaran, and Shih-Yu Wang The signature of the stratospheric Brewer-Dobson circulation in tropospheric clouds 83 Ying Li and David W. J. Thompson The equal frequency of stratospheric sudden warmings in El Niño and La Niña 89 Amy H. Butler, C.I. Garfinkel, D.W. Waugh, M.M. Hurwitz, and L.M. Polvani 5 DROUGHT AND HYDROCLIMATE MONITORING AND PREDICTION 90 Objective blends of multiple ensemble-mean NLDAS drought indices Youlong Xia, Michael Ek, Christa Peters-Liddard, David Mocko, Justin Sheffield, and 91 Eric F. Wood Monitoring and maintenance of a cold-season drought 99 Er Lu Factors driving the persistence of ENSO-led winter rainfall deficits into late-spring and early-summer over Texas 103 D. Nelun Fernando, Rong Fu, Kingtse C. Mo, Bridget R. Scanlon, Ruben Solis, Lei Yin, Adam Bowerman, and Robert Mace Tree-ring extension of precipitation variability at 12-km grid points in eastern Nevada: Implications for drought analysis 107 Franco Biondi Comparison of dynamically and statistically downscaled seasonal climate forecasts for the cold season over the United States 112 Jin-Ho Yoon, L. Ruby Leung, and James Correia Jr. iii 6 GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACT ON SEASONAL VARIABILITY AND 114 PREDICTION Is global warming changing the ENSO precursor in the Western North Pacific? 115 Shih-Yu Wang, Michelle L’Heureux, and Jin-Ho Yoon Weakened interannual variability in the tropical Pacific Ocean since 2000 Zeng-Zhen Hu, Arun Kumar, Hong-Li Ren, Hui Wang, Michelle L'Heureux, and Fei- 121 Fei Jin 7 SETTING UP AN OPERATIONAL FRAMEWORK 122 Web-Based Reanalysis Intercomparison Tools (WRIT) to allow easy analysis and comparison of reanalyses and other datasets 123 Catherine A. Smith, Gilbert P. Compo, and Don K. Hooper Enhancement of Local Climate Analysis Tool (LCAT) to better serve NWS staff and users 128 Marina Timofeyeva, Fiona Horsfall, Annette Hollingshead, and Jenna Meyers Weather and climate analyses using the new NVAP-MEaSUREs global water vapor dataset 132 Thomas H. Vonder Haar, Janice L. Bytheway, and John M. Forsythe OVERVIEW NOAA's 37th Climate Diagnostics and Prediction Workshop was held in Fort Collins, Colorado, on 22-25 October 2012. It was hosted by the Colorado State University (CSU) and the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA); and co-sponsored by the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction and the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). The American Meteorological Society was a cooperating sponsor. The workshop addressed the status and prospects for advancing climate prediction, monitoring, and diagnostics, with emphasis on five major themes: 1. Improving climate prediction tools and techniques through dynamical and statistical models and methods, forecaster practices and protocols, data and model improvements, and scientific concepts. 2. Prospects for improved understanding, prediction, and simulation of intra-seasonal, seasonal, and inter-annual climate variability, including the extratropical annular modes, stratosphere/troposphere coupling, tropical-extratropical
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