Combination of Decadal Predictions and Climate Projections in Time: Challenges and Potential Solutions

Author(s): Daniel Befort, Lukas Brunner, L. Bochert, C. O'Reilly, J. Mignot, A. Ballinger, G. Hegerl, J. Murphy, A. Weisheimer
Abstract: This study presents an approach to provide seamless climate information by concatenating decadal climate predictions and climate projections in time. Results for near-surface air temperature over 29 regions indicate that such an approach has potential to provide meaningful information but can also introduce significant inconsistencies. Inconsistencies are often most pronounced for relatively extreme quantiles of the CMIP6 multi-model ensemble distribution, whereas they are generally smaller and mostly insignificant for quantiles close to the median. The regions most affected are the North Atlantic, Greenland and Northern Europe. Two potential ways to reduce inconsistencies are discussed, including a simple calibration method and a weighting approach based on model performance. Calibration generally reduces inconsistencies but does not eliminate all of them. The impact of model weighting is minor, which is found to be linked to the small size of the decadal climate prediction ensemble, which in turn limits the applicability of that method.
Organisation(s): Department of Meteorology and Geophysics
External organisation(s): University of Oxford, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Institute Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL), École Normale Supérieure, Paris , University of Reading, University of Edinburgh, Met Office, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)
Journal: Geophysical Research Letters
Volume: 49
ISSN: 0094-8276
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL098568
Publication date: 08-2022
Peer reviewed: Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012: 105204 Climatology
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Geophysics, General Earth and Planetary Sciences
Portal url: https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/34ca4eb7-3157-47b3-909c-4ff49e2299cb

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