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Seasonal forecasts of North Atlantic tropical cyclone activity in the North American Multi-Model Ensemble

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Abstract

The North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME)-Phase II models are evaluated in terms of their retrospective seasonal forecast skill of the North Atlantic (NA) tropical cyclone (TC) activity, with a focus on TC frequency. The TC identification and tracking algorithm is modified to accommodate model data at daily resolution. It is also applied to three reanalysis products at the spatial and temporal resolution of the NMME-Phase II ensemble to allow for a more objective estimation of forecast skill. When used with the reanalysis data, the TC tracking generates realistic climatological distributions of the NA TC formation and tracks, and represents the interannual variability of the NA TC frequency quite well. Forecasts with the multi-model ensemble (MME) when initialized in April and later tend to have skill in predicting the NA seasonal TC counts (and TC days). At longer leads, the skill is low or marginal, although one of the models produces skillful forecasts when initialized as early as January and February. At short lead times, while demonstrating the highest skill levels the MME also tends to significantly outperform the individual models and attain skill comparable to the reanalysis. In addition, the short-lead MME forecasts are quite reliable. At regional scales, the skill is rather limited and mostly present in the western tropical NA and the Caribbean Sea. It is found that the overall MME forecast skill is limited by poor representation of the low-frequency variability in the predicted TC frequency, and large fluctuations in skill on decadal time scales. Addressing these deficiencies is thought to increase the value of the NMME ensemble in providing operational guidance.

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Notes

  1. Due to relatively low resolution of the NMME models, these are not TCs as would be observed but what are commonly called in low resolution studies Tropical Cyclone Like Vortices (TCLVs; Bengtsson et al. 1982) though in this paper we refer to them as tropical cyclones.

  2. “TC days” is defined as a lifetime of all TCs accumulated over a season, measured in days.

  3. At the time of this writing, daily dynamical fields for a common 1982–2012 hindcast period were available for download only for a subset of the NMME-Phase II models, which are listed in Table 1.

  4. The MJJASON period encompasses most of the TC season in the NA basin.

  5. The MME mean is defined as the average over all the hindcasts, with all ensemble members of each model having equal weight.

  6. Forecasts are calibrated (without cross-validation) where each ensemble member is multiplied by a constant factor so that the predicted ensemble-mean and observed climatologies become equal.

  7. Relative SST index is defined as the difference between MDR SST and global tropical-mean SST (e.g., Zhao et al. 2010).

  8. Niño-3.4 index is defined as SST averaged over 5°S–5°N, 120°–170°W.

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Acknowledgements

Funding of COLA for this study is provided by Grants from NSF (AGS-1338427), NOAA (NA09OAR4310058 and NA14OAR4310160), NASA (NNX14AM19G), and the ONR Grant (N00014-15-1-2745). We acknowledge NOAA MAPP, NSF, NASA, and the DOE that support the NMME-Phase II system, and we thank the climate modeling groups (Environment Canada, NASA, NCAR, NOAA/GFDL, NOAA/NCEP, and University of Miami) for producing and making available their model output. NOAA/NCEP, NOAA/CTB, and NOAA/CPO jointly provided coordinating support and led development of the NMME-Phase II system. We also gratefully acknowledge computing resources on the Yellowstone supercomputer provided by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA), George Mason University (GMU), 113 Research Hall, Mail Stop 2B3, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA, 22030, USA

    Julia V. Manganello, Benjamin A. Cash & James L. Kinter III

  2. Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, UK

    Kevin I. Hodges

  3. George Mason University (GMU), Fairfax, VA, USA

    James L. Kinter III

Authors
  1. Julia V. Manganello
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  2. Benjamin A. Cash
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  3. Kevin I. Hodges
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  4. James L. Kinter III
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Julia V. Manganello.

Additional information

This paper is a contribution to the special collection on the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) seasonal prediction experiment. The special collection focuses on documenting the use of the NMME system database for research ranging from predictability studies, to multi-model prediction evaluation and diagnostics, to emerging applications of climate predictability for subseasonal to seasonal predictions. This special issue is coordinated by Annarita Mariotti (NOAA), Heather Archambault (NOAA), Jin Huang (NOAA), Ben Kirtman (University of Miami) and Gabriele Villarini (University of Iowa).

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Manganello, J.V., Cash, B.A., Hodges, K.I. et al. Seasonal forecasts of North Atlantic tropical cyclone activity in the North American Multi-Model Ensemble. Clim Dyn 53, 7169–7184 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3670-5

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