Journal article
Impact of land surface initialization approach on subseasonal forecast skill: A regional analysis in the southern hemisphere
Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol.15(1), pp.300-319
2014
Abstract
The authors use a sophisticated coupled land–atmosphere modeling system for a Southern Hemisphere subdomain centered over southeastern Australia to evaluate differences in simulation skill from two different land surface initialization approaches. The first approach uses equilibrated land surface states obtained from offline simulations of the land surface model, and the second uses land surface states obtained from reanalyses. The authors find that land surface initialization using prior offline simulations contribute to relative gains in subseasonal forecast skill. In particular, relative gains in forecast skill for temperature of 10%–20% within the first 30 days of the forecast can be attributed to the land surface initialization method using offline states. For precipitation there is no distinct preference for the land surface initialization method, with limited gains in forecast skill irrespective of the lead time. The authors evaluated the asymmetry between maximum and minimum temperatures and found that maximum temperatures had the largest gains in relative forecast skill, exceeding 20% in some regions. These results were statistically significant at the 98% confidence level at up to 60 days into the forecast period. For minimum temperature, using reanalyses to initialize the land surface contributed to relative gains in forecast skill, reaching 40% in parts of the domain that were statistically significant at the 98% confidence level. The contrasting impact of the land surface initialization method between maximum and minimum temperature was associated with different soil moisture coupling mechanisms. Therefore, land surface initialization from prior offline simulations does improve predictability for temperature, particularly maximum temperature, but with less obvious improvements for precipitation and minimum temperature over southeastern Australia.
Details
- Title
- Impact of land surface initialization approach on subseasonal forecast skill: A regional analysis in the southern hemisphere
- Authors/Creators
- A.L. Hirsch (Author/Creator)J. Kala (Author/Creator)A.J. Pitman (Author/Creator)C. Carouge (Author/Creator)J.P. Evans (Author/Creator)V. Haverd (Author/Creator)D. Mocko (Author/Creator)
- Publication Details
- Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol.15(1), pp.300-319
- Publisher
- American Meteorological Society
- Identifiers
- 991005545247207891
- Murdoch Affiliation
- Murdoch University
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:
Source: InCites
Metrics
139 File views/ downloads
71 Record Views
InCites Highlights
These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output
- Collaboration types
- Industry collaboration
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Citation topics
- 8 Earth Sciences
- 8.19 Oceanography, Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
- 8.19.7 Hydroclimatic Modeling
- Web Of Science research areas
- Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
- ESI research areas
- Geosciences