Abstract
The climatology, amplitude error, phase error, and mean square skill score (MSSS) of temperature predictions from five different state-of-the-art general circulation models (GCMs) have been examined for the winter (December–January–February) seasons over North India. In this region, temperature variability affects the phenological development processes of wheat crops and the grain yield. The GCM forecasts of temperature for a whole season issued in November from various organizations are compared with observed gridded temperature data obtained from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) for the period 1982–2009. The MSSS indicates that the models have skills of varying degrees. Predictions of maximum and minimum temperature obtained from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) climate forecast system model (NCEP_CFSv2) are compared with station level observations from the Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment (SASE). It has been found that when the model temperatures are corrected to account the bias in the model and actual orography, the predictions are able to delineate the observed trend compared to the trend without orography correction.
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Acknowledgments
This research has been conducted as part of the project entitled “Precipitation and temperature variability and extended range seasonal prediction during winter over Western Himalayas” at IIT, Delhi, sponsored by the Snow Avalanche Study Establishment (SASE), Chandigarh. We gratefully acknowledge the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), Data Library group for making five of their GCM-based seasonal forecasting systems available to this study. Also, the authors sincerely thank the India Meteorological Department (IMD) for providing the gridded temperature data for this study. The authors are thankful to Bianca C. for editing/correcting the English grammar of the manuscript. The authors also acknowledge the comments by the anonymous reviewers, which helped in improving the earlier version of the manuscript.
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Tiwari, P.R., Kar, S.C., Mohanty, U.C. et al. Seasonal prediction skill of winter temperature over North India. Theor Appl Climatol 124, 15–29 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1397-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1397-y