Subseasonal precipitation forecasts of opportunity over central southwest Asia

Breeden, Melissa L.; Albers, John R.; Hoell, Andrew

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-3-1183-2022

Articles | Volume 3, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-3-1183-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-3-1183-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 3, issue 4

Research article

|

27 Oct 2022

Research article |

| 27 Oct 2022

Subseasonal precipitation forecasts of opportunity over central southwest Asia

Melissa L. Breeden, John R. Albers, and Andrew Hoell

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-3-1183-2022-supplement

Data sets

JRA-55: Japanese 55-year Reanalysis, Daily 3-Hourly and 6-Hourly Data Japan Meteorological Agency https://doi.org/10.5065/D6HH6H41

CHIRPS: Rainfall Estimates from Rain Gauge and Satellite Observations Climate Hazards Center https://data.chc.ucsb.edu/products/CHIRPS-2.0/global_daily/netcdf/p25/

Madden-Julian Oscillation Commonwealth of Australia http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/mjo/graphics/rmm.74toRealtime.txt

Short summary

We use a statistical dynamical model to generate precipitation forecasts for lead times of 2–6 weeks over southwest Asia, which are needed to support humanitarian food distribution. The model signal-to-noise ratio is used to identify a smaller subset of forecasts with particularly high skill, so-called subseasonal forecasts of opportunity (SFOs). Precipitation SFOs are often related to slowly evolving tropical phenomena, namely the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and Madden–Julian Oscillation.