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Validation of Seasonal Forecast of Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall

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Abstract

The experimental seasonal forecast of Indian summer monsoon (ISM) rainfall during June through September using Community Atmosphere Model (CAM) version 3 has been carried out at the Space Applications Centre Ahmedabad since 2009. The forecasts, based on a number of ensemble members (ten minimum) of CAM, are generated in several phases and updated on regular basis. On completion of 5 years of experimental seasonal forecasts in operational mode, it is required that the overall validation or correctness of the forecast system is quantified and that the scope is assessed for further improvements of the forecast over time, if any. The ensemble model climatology generated by a set of 20 identical CAM simulations is considered as the model control simulation. The performance of the forecast has been evaluated by assuming the control simulation as the model reference. The forecast improvement factor shows positive improvements, with higher values for the recent forecasted years as compared to the control experiment over the Indian landmass. The Taylor diagram representation of the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC), standard deviation and centered root mean square difference has been used to demonstrate the best PCC, in the order of 0.74–0.79, recorded for the seasonal forecast made during 2013. Further, the bias score of different phases of experiment revealed the fact that the ISM rainfall forecast is affected by overestimation in predicting the low rain-rate (less than 7 mm/day), but by underestimation in the medium and high rain-rate (higher than 11 mm/day). Overall, the analysis shows significant improvement of the ISM forecast over the last 5 years, viz. 2009–2013, due to several important modifications that have been implemented in the forecast system. The validation exercise has also pointed out a number of shortcomings in the forecast system; these will be addressed in the upcoming years of experiments to improve the quality of the ISM prediction.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thankfully acknowledge the anonymous reviewers for their critical comments and suggestions, which substantially helped to improve the quality and presentation of the present version of the manuscript. Authors are thankful to the NCAR for providing the source code of the CAM3 model. The NCEP are thankfully acknowledged for providing the re-analysis for preparing the initial model conditions. The authors are thankful to Dr. M Rajeevan, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India, for providing gridded rainfall from IMD for the validation purpose. The authors would like to thank the Director, Space Applications Centre (SAC) for his constant encouragement and guidance. The authors are also thankful to Databases and Web based Software Division (DWD) of SAC for the excellent computational facility provided while carrying out this work. The first author would like to acknowledge the Department of Mathematics of Gujarat University, Ahmedabad for the support provided for his Ph.D., work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Atmosphere and Oceanic Sciences Group, Space Applications Centre (SAC), ISRO, Ahmedabad, India

    Sukanta Kumar Das, Sanjib Kumar Deb & C. M. Kishtawal

  2. Earth, Ocean, Atmosphere, Planetary Sciences and Applications Area (EPSA), Space Applications Centre (SAC), ISRO, Ahmedabad, India

    Pradip Kumar Pal

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  1. Sukanta Kumar Das
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Correspondence to Sukanta Kumar Das.

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Das, S.K., Deb, S.K., Kishtawal, C.M. et al. Validation of Seasonal Forecast of Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall. Pure Appl. Geophys. 172, 1699–1716 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-014-1024-3

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