Evaluation of CFSV2 Forecast Skill for Indian Summer Monsoon Sub-Seasonal Characteristics

Abstract:

Prediction of sub seasonal monsoon characteristics of Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) is highly crucial for agricultural planning and water resource management. The Climate forecast System version 2 (CFS V2), the state of the art coupled climate model developed by NCEP, is currently being employed for the seasonal and extended range forecasts of ISM. Even though CFSV2 is a fully coupled ocean- atmosphere- land model with advanced physics, increased resolution and refined initialisation, its ISM forecasts, in terms of seasonal mean and variability needs improvement. Numerous works have been done for verifying the CFSV2 forecasts in terms of the seasonal mean, its mean and variability, active and break spells, and El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) - monsoon interactions. Most of these works are based on either rain fall strength or rainfall based indices. Here we evaluate the skill of CFS v2 model in forecasting the various sub seasonal features of ISM, viz., the onset and withdrawal days of monsoon that are determined using circulation based indices, the Monsoon Intra Seasonal Oscillations (MISO), and Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures. The MISO index, we use here, is based on zonal wind at 850 hPa and Outgoing Long wave Radiation (OLR) anomalies. With this work, we aim at assessing the skill of the model in simulating the large scale circulation patterns and their variabilities within the monsoon season. Variabilities in these large scale circulation patterns are primarily responsible for the variabilities in the seasonal monsoon strength and its temporal distribution across the season. We find that the model can better forecast the large scale circulation and than the actual precipitation. Hence we suggest that seasonal rainfall forecasts can be improved by the statistical downscaling of CFSV2 forecasts by incorporating the established relationships between the well forecasted large scale variables and monsoon precipitation.