The tropical Pacific has begun to experience a new type of El Nio, which has occurred particularly frequently during the last decade, referred to as the central Pacific(CP) El Nio. Various coupled models with differen...The tropical Pacific has begun to experience a new type of El Nio, which has occurred particularly frequently during the last decade, referred to as the central Pacific(CP) El Nio. Various coupled models with different degrees of complexity have been used to make real-time El Nio predictions, but high uncertainty still exists in their forecasts. It remains unknown as to how much of this uncertainty is specifically related to the new CP-type El Nio and how much is common to both this type and the conventional Eastern Pacific(EP)-type El Nio. In this study, the deterministic performance of an El Nio–Southern Oscillation(ENSO) ensemble prediction system is examined for the two types of El Nio. Ensemble hindcasts are run for the nine EP El Nio events and twelve CP El Nio events that have occurred since 1950. The results show that(1) the skill scores for the EP events are significantly better than those for the CP events, at all lead times;(2) the systematic forecast biases come mostly from the prediction of the CP events; and(3) the systematic error is characterized by an overly warm eastern Pacific during the spring season, indicating a stronger spring prediction barrier for the CP El Nio. Further improvements to coupled atmosphere–ocean models in terms of CP El Nio prediction should be recognized as a key and high-priority task for the climate prediction community.展开更多
Temperature and relative humidity profiles derived from two China-made global positioning system(GPS) radiosondes(GPS-TK and CF-06-A) during the east tropical Indian Ocean(ETIO) experiment were compared with Vai...Temperature and relative humidity profiles derived from two China-made global positioning system(GPS) radiosondes(GPS-TK and CF-06-A) during the east tropical Indian Ocean(ETIO) experiment were compared with Vaisala RS92-SGP to assess the performances of China-made radiosondes over the tropical ocean.The results show that there have relative large biases in temperature observations between the GPSTK and the RS92-SGP in the low troposphere,with a warm bias of greater than 2 K in the day and a cooling bias of 0.6 K at night.The temperature differences of the CF-06-A were small in the troposphere both in daytime and nighttime,and became large peak-to-peak fluctuations in the stratosphere.The intercomparison of the relative humidity showed that the CF-06-A had large random errors due to the limitation of sensors and the lack of correction scheme,and the GPS-TK had large systematic biases in the low troposphere which might be related to the temperature impact.GPS height measurements are clearly suitable for China-made radiosonde systems operation.At night,the CF-06-A and the GPS-TK could provide virtual potential temperature and atmospheric boundary layer height measurements of suitable quality for both weather and climate research.As a result of the intercomparison experiment,major errors in the Chinamade radiosonde systems were well indentified and subsequently rectified to ensure improving accuracy for historical and future radiosondes.展开更多
基金supported by the National Program for Support of Top-notch Young Professionalsthe National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41576019)J.-Y. YU was supported by the US National Science Foundation (Grant No. AGS-150514)
文摘The tropical Pacific has begun to experience a new type of El Nio, which has occurred particularly frequently during the last decade, referred to as the central Pacific(CP) El Nio. Various coupled models with different degrees of complexity have been used to make real-time El Nio predictions, but high uncertainty still exists in their forecasts. It remains unknown as to how much of this uncertainty is specifically related to the new CP-type El Nio and how much is common to both this type and the conventional Eastern Pacific(EP)-type El Nio. In this study, the deterministic performance of an El Nio–Southern Oscillation(ENSO) ensemble prediction system is examined for the two types of El Nio. Ensemble hindcasts are run for the nine EP El Nio events and twelve CP El Nio events that have occurred since 1950. The results show that(1) the skill scores for the EP events are significantly better than those for the CP events, at all lead times;(2) the systematic forecast biases come mostly from the prediction of the CP events; and(3) the systematic error is characterized by an overly warm eastern Pacific during the spring season, indicating a stronger spring prediction barrier for the CP El Nio. Further improvements to coupled atmosphere–ocean models in terms of CP El Nio prediction should be recognized as a key and high-priority task for the climate prediction community.
基金The National Basic Research Program(973 Program)of China under contract Nos 2011CB403503 and 2011CB403504the National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract No.41276024+1 种基金the Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract No.91228202the National Foundation of the Indian Ocean Opening Voyage Project of China under contract Nos 41149903 and 41049908
文摘Temperature and relative humidity profiles derived from two China-made global positioning system(GPS) radiosondes(GPS-TK and CF-06-A) during the east tropical Indian Ocean(ETIO) experiment were compared with Vaisala RS92-SGP to assess the performances of China-made radiosondes over the tropical ocean.The results show that there have relative large biases in temperature observations between the GPSTK and the RS92-SGP in the low troposphere,with a warm bias of greater than 2 K in the day and a cooling bias of 0.6 K at night.The temperature differences of the CF-06-A were small in the troposphere both in daytime and nighttime,and became large peak-to-peak fluctuations in the stratosphere.The intercomparison of the relative humidity showed that the CF-06-A had large random errors due to the limitation of sensors and the lack of correction scheme,and the GPS-TK had large systematic biases in the low troposphere which might be related to the temperature impact.GPS height measurements are clearly suitable for China-made radiosonde systems operation.At night,the CF-06-A and the GPS-TK could provide virtual potential temperature and atmospheric boundary layer height measurements of suitable quality for both weather and climate research.As a result of the intercomparison experiment,major errors in the Chinamade radiosonde systems were well indentified and subsequently rectified to ensure improving accuracy for historical and future radiosondes.