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Assessment of the APCC coupled MME suite in predicting the distinctive climate impacts of two flavors of ENSO during boreal winter

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Abstract

Forecast skill of the APEC Climate Center (APCC) Multi-Model Ensemble (MME) seasonal forecast system in predicting two main types of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), namely canonical (or cold tongue) and Modoki ENSO, and their regional climate impacts is assessed for boreal winter. The APCC MME is constructed by simple composite of ensemble forecasts from five independent coupled ocean-atmosphere climate models. Based on a hindcast set targeting boreal winter prediction for the period 1982–2004, we show that the MME can predict and discern the important differences in the patterns of tropical Pacific sea surface temperature anomaly between the canonical and Modoki ENSO one and four month ahead. Importantly, the four month lead MME beats the persistent forecast. The MME reasonably predicts the distinct impacts of the canonical ENSO, including the strong winter monsoon rainfall over East Asia, the below normal rainfall and above normal temperature over Australia, the anomalously wet conditions across the south and cold conditions over the whole area of USA, and the anomalously dry conditions over South America. However, there are some limitations in capturing its regional impacts, especially, over Australasia and tropical South America at a lead time of one and four months. Nonetheless, forecast skills for rainfall and temperature over East Asia and North America during ENSO Modoki are comparable to or slightly higher than those during canonical ENSO events.

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Notes

  1. Rasmusson and Carpenter (1982) mostly discussed westward propagating conventional El Niños which occurred before the 1980s. McPhaden (1999) has catalogued the post-1980s canonical El Niño events such as in 1982/1983 and 1997/1998. The distinction of the post-1980s is that they propagate eastward.

  2. 1986, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1994, 2002, 2004, and 2009.

  3. 1982–1983, 1987–1988, 1997–1998, 2006–2007, and 2010.

  4. http://iprc.soest.hawaii.edu/~jylee/.

  5. The area-averaged sea surface temperature anomaly over the region bounded by (5°S–5°N, 150°W–90°W) is known as Niño3 index, which is a well-known ENSO index.

  6. The El Niño Modoki index or EMI is defined as EMI = [SSTA]C − 0.5[SSTA]E − 0.5[SSTA]W, where the square bracket with a subscript represents the area-mean SSTA, averaged over one of the three regions specified as the central (C: 165°E–140°W, 10°S–10°N), eastern (E: 110°W–70°W, 15°S–5°N), and western (W: 125°E–145°E, 10°S–20°N).

  7. From linear considerations associated with the regression method, we can expect that the impacts of La Niña (La Niña Modoki) are opposite to those of El Niño (El Niño Modoki). As it can be seen, the limitation stems from the fact that the non-linearity in the impacts is not addressed.

  8. Australasia is defined by a region of Oceania comprising Australia, New Zealand, and neighboring islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean.

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Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate the participating institutes of the APCC coupled MME prediction system for providing the hindcast experiment data. Discussion with Prof. B. Wang is acknowledged. J.-B. Ahn was supported by the Korea Meteorological Administration Research and Development Program under Grant CATER 2012-3083. K. Ashok acknowledges the support of Prof. B. N. Goswami, Director, IITM (fully funded by MoES, Government of India), and the MoES for the SAPRISE support under the MoES-NERC grant. Views expressed herein wholly are of the authors and do not reflect the views of the organizations they are affiliated to.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. APEC Climate Center (APCC), Pusan, Republic of Korea

    Hye-In Jeong & Doo Young Lee

  2. Pusan National University, Pusan, Republic of Korea

    Hye-In Jeong, Doo Young Lee & Joong-Bae Ahn

  3. Centre for Climate Change Research, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, India

    Karumuri Ashok

  4. International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA

    June-Yi Lee

  5. Research Institute for Global Change/JAMSTEC, Yokohama, Japan

    Jing-Jia Luo

  6. NCEP/NOAA Climate Prediction Center, Camp Spring, MD, USA

    Jae-Kyung E. Schemm

  7. Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Harry H. Hendon & Karl Braganza

  8. Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA/GSFC), Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Yoo-Geun Ham

  9. Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research Studies and Investigations, Universities Space Research Association, Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Yoo-Geun Ham

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  1. Hye-In Jeong
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  3. Karumuri Ashok
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Correspondence to Karumuri Ashok.

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Jeong, HI., Lee, D.Y., Ashok, K. et al. Assessment of the APCC coupled MME suite in predicting the distinctive climate impacts of two flavors of ENSO during boreal winter. Clim Dyn 39, 475–493 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1359-3

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