This talk will present and discuss recent
developments in weather and climate forecasting from two weeks
to a season ahead, the so-called subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S)
range. Until quite recently this forecast range was thought to
be a predictability desert - too far ahead for information in
atmospheric initial conditions to useful, and too short for
the effects of ocean and land boundary conditions to be felt
strongly enough. The World Weather Research Program (WWRP) and
World Climate Research Program (WCRP) launched a joint
research initiative in 2013 with the goal to improve forecast
skill and understanding in the S2S range and promote uptake by
operational centers and exploitation by the applications
communities. A major achievement of this project has been the
establishment of an extensive database containing sub-seasonal
(up to 60 days)near real-time forecasts (3-weeks behind
real-time) and re-forecasts. The talk will present some
highlights of S2S project research on S2S sources of
predictably, forecast post-processing techniques and show some
results from the analysis of the S2S and SubX databases as
well as some tools to access and use them.
About the Speaker:
Dr Andrew Robertson is a Senior Research
Scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate
and Society, part of the Earth Institute at Columbia
University. He heads the IRI Climate Group and teaches as an
adjunct professor at Columbia. Graduating with a PhD in
atmospheric dynamics, he has over 30 years of experience in
topics ranging from midlatitude meteorology, coupled
ocean-atmosphere climate dynamics, sub-seasonal and
seasonal forecasting, downscaling, and tailoring of climate
information for use in development of climate services. He has
taught in capacity building training courses around the
world. Robertson serves a co-chair of the WWRP/WCRP
Sub-Seasonal to Seasonal Prediction Project and is a member of
the WMO Expert Team on Climate Services Information System
Operations (ET-CSISO).