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Performance evaluation of NCEP climate forecast system for the prediction of winter temperatures over India

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Abstract

The surface air temperature during the winter season (December–February) in India adversely affects agriculture as well as day-to-day life. Therefore, the accurate prediction of winter temperature in extended range is of utmost importance. The National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) has been providing climatic variables from the fully coupled global climate model, known as Climate Forecast System version 1 (CFSv1) on monthly to seasonal scale since 2004, and it has been upgraded to CFSv2 subsequently in 2011. In the present study, the performance of CFSv1 and CFSv2 in simulating the winter 2 m maximum, minimum, and mean temperatures (T max, T min, and T mean, respectively) over India is evaluated with respect to India Meteorological Department (IMD) 1° × 1° observations. The hindcast data obtained from both versions of CFS from 1982 to 2009 (27 years) with November initial conditions (lead-1) are used. The analyses of winter (T max, T min, and T mean) temperatures revealed that CFSv1 and CFSv2 are able to replicate the patterns of observed climatology, interannual variability, and coefficient of variation with a slight negative bias. Of the two, CFSv2 is appreciable in capturing increasing trends of winter temperatures like observed. The T max, T min, and T mean correlations from CFSv2 is significantly high (0.35, 0.53, and 0.51, respectively), while CFSv1 correlations are less (0.29, 0.15, and 0.12) and insignificant. This performance of CFSv2 may be due to the better estimation of surface heat budget terms and realistic CO2 concentration, which were absent in CFSv1. CFSv2 proved to have a high probability of detection in predicting different categories (below, near, and above normal) for winter T min, which are required for crop yield and public utility services, over north India.

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Acknowledgments

This research is an outcome of the project, “Development and Application of Extended Range Forecast System for Climate Risk Management in Agriculture Phase–II,” sponsored by the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Government of India. The authors thank the India Meteorological Department (IMD) for providing observed data. The authors are grateful to the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) for providing the hindcast data sets of both versions of CFS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth, Ocean and Climate Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bhubaneswar, Toshali Bhawan, Satyanagar, Bhubaneswar, 751007, Odisha, India

    M. M. Nageswararao, U. C. Mohanty, S. Kiran Prasad & Krishna K. Osuri

  2. Department of Meteorology and Oceanography, Andhra University (AU), Visakhapatnam, 530003, Andhra Pradesh, India

    M. M. Nageswararao & S. S. V. S. Ramakrishna

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  1. M. M. Nageswararao
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Correspondence to M. M. Nageswararao.

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Nageswararao, M.M., Mohanty, U.C., Kiran Prasad, S. et al. Performance evaluation of NCEP climate forecast system for the prediction of winter temperatures over India. Theor Appl Climatol 126, 437–451 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1588-6

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