Impact of ocean data assimilation on the seasonal forecast of the 2014/15 marine heatwave in the Northeast Pacific Ocean

A remarkable marine heatwave,known as the“Blob”,occurred in the Northeast Pacific Ocean from late 2013 to early 2016,which displayed strong warm anomalies extending from the surface to a depth of 300 m.This study employed two assimilation schemes based on the global Climate Forecast System of Nanjing University of Information Science(NUIST-CFS 1.0)to investigate the impact of ocean data assimilation on the seasonal prediction of this extreme marine heatwave.The sea surface temperature(SST)nudging scheme assimilates SST only,while the deterministic ensemble Kalman filter(EnKF)scheme assimilates observations from the surface to the deep ocean.The latter notably improves the forecasting skill for subsurface temperature anomalies,especially at the depth of 100-300 m(the lower layer),outperforming the SST nudging scheme.It excels in predicting both horizontal and vertical heat transport in the lower layer,contributing to improved forecasts of the lower-layer warming during the Blob.These improvements stem from the assimilation of subsurface observational data,which are important in predicting the upper-ocean conditions.The results suggest that assimilating ocean data with the EnKF scheme significantly enhances the accuracy in predicting subsurface temperature anomalies during the Blob and offers better understanding of its underlying mechanisms.

How Do Deep Learning Forecasting Models Perform for Surface Variables in the South China Sea Compared to Operational Oceanography Forecasting Systems?

It is fundamental and useful to investigate how deep learning forecasting models(DLMs)perform compared to operational oceanography forecast systems(OFSs).However,few studies have intercompared their performances using an identical reference.In this study,three physically reasonable DLMs are implemented for the forecasting of the sea surface temperature(SST),sea level anomaly(SLA),and sea surface velocity in the South China Sea.The DLMs are validated against both the testing dataset and the“OceanPredict”Class 4 dataset.Results show that the DLMs'RMSEs against the latter increase by 44%,245%,302%,and 109%for SST,SLA,current speed,and direction,respectively,compared to those against the former.Therefore,different references have significant influences on the validation,and it is necessary to use an identical and independent reference to intercompare the DLMs and OFSs.Against the Class 4 dataset,the DLMs present significantly better performance for SLA than the OFSs,and slightly better performances for other variables.The error patterns of the DLMs and OFSs show a high degree of similarity,which is reasonable from the viewpoint of predictability,facilitating further applications of the DLMs.For extreme events,the DLMs and OFSs both present large but similar forecast errors for SLA and current speed,while the DLMs are likely to give larger errors for SST and current direction.This study provides an evaluation of the forecast skills of commonly used DLMs and provides an example to objectively intercompare different DLMs.

Multi-Scenario Probabilistic Load Flow Calculation Considering Wind Speed Correlation

As the proportion of newenergy increases,the traditional cumulant method(CM)produces significant errorswhen performing probabilistic load flow(PLF)calculations with large-scale wind power integrated.Considering the wind speed correlation,a multi-scenario PLF calculation method that combines random sampling and segmented discrete wind farm power was proposed.Firstly,based on constructing discrete scenes of wind farms,the Nataf transform is used to handle the correlation between wind speeds.Then,the random sampling method determines the output probability of discrete wind power scenarios when wind speed exhibits correlation.Finally,the PLF calculation results of each scenario areweighted and superimposed following the total probability formula to obtain the final power flow calculation result.Verified in the IEEE standard node system,the absolute percent error(APE)for the mean and standard deviation(SD)of the node voltages and branch active power are all within 1%,and the average root mean square(AMSR)values of the probability curves are all less than 1%.

AI-based Correction of Wave Forecasts Using the Transformer-enhanced UNet Model

Grid forecasting can be used to effectively enhance the spatial and temporal density of forecast products,thereby improving the capability of short-term marine disaster forecasting and warnings in terms of proximity.The traditional method that relies on forecasters'subjective correction of station observation data for forecasting has been unable to meet the practical needs of refined forecasting.To address this problem,this paper proposes a Transformer-enhanced UNet(TransUNet)model for wave forecast AI correction,which fuses wind and wave information.The Transformer structure is integrated into the encoder of the UNet model,and instead of using the traditional upsampling method,the dual-sampling module is employed in the decoder to enhance the feature extraction capability.This paper compares the TransUNet model with the traditional UNet model using wind speed forecast data,wave height forecast data,and significant wave height reanalysis data provided by ECMWF.The experimental results indicate that the TransUNet model yields smaller root-meansquare errors,mean errors,and standard deviations of the corrected results for the next 24-h forecasts than does the UNet model.Specifically,the root-mean-square error decreased by more than 21.55%compared to its precorrection value.According to the statistical analysis,87.81%of the corrected wave height errors for the next 24-h forecast were within±0.2m,with only 4.56%falling beyond±0.3 m.This model effectively limits the error range and enhances the ability to forecast wave heights.

TianXing:A Linear Complexity Transformer Model with Explicit Attention Decay for Global Weather Forecasting

In this paper,we introduce TianXing,a transformer-based data-driven model designed with physical augmentation for skillful and efficient global weather forecasting.Previous data-driven transformer models such as Pangu-Weather,FengWu,and FuXi have emerged as promising alternatives for numerical weather prediction in weather forecasting.However,these models have been characterized by their substantial computational resource consumption during training and limited incorporation of explicit physical guidance in their modeling frameworks.In contrast,TianXing applies a linear complexity mechanism that ensures proportional scalability with input data size while significantly diminishing GPU resource demands,with only a marginal compromise in accuracy.Furthermore,TianXing proposes an explicit attention decay mechanism in the linear attention derived from physical insights to enhance its forecasting skill.The mechanism can reweight attention based on Earth's spherical distances and learned sparse multivariate coupling relationships,promptingTianXing to prioritize dynamically relevant neighboring features.Finally,to enhance its performance in mediumrange forecasting,TianXing employs a stacked autoregressive forecast algorithm.Validation of the model's architecture is conducted using ERA5 reanalysis data at a 5.625°latitude-longitude resolution,while a high-resolution dataset at 0.25°is utilized for training the actual forecasting model.Notably,the TianXing exhibits excellent performance,particularly in the Z500(geopotential height)and T850(temperature)fields,surpassing previous data-driven models and operational fullresolution models such as NCEP GFS and ECMWF IFS,as evidenced by latitude-weighted RMSE and ACC metrics.Moreover,the TianXing has demonstrated remarkable capabilities in predicting extreme weather events,such as typhoons.

Short-TermWind Power Forecast Based on STL-IAOA-iTransformer Algorithm:A Case Study in Northwest China

Accurate short-term wind power forecast technique plays a crucial role in maintaining the safety and economic efficiency of smart grids.Although numerous studies have employed various methods to forecast wind power,there remains a research gap in leveraging swarm intelligence algorithms to optimize the hyperparameters of the Transformer model for wind power prediction.To improve the accuracy of short-term wind power forecast,this paper proposes a hybrid short-term wind power forecast approach named STL-IAOA-iTransformer,which is based on seasonal and trend decomposition using LOESS(STL)and iTransformer model optimized by improved arithmetic optimization algorithm(IAOA).First,to fully extract the power data features,STL is used to decompose the original data into components with less redundant information.The extracted components as well as the weather data are then input into iTransformer for short-term wind power forecast.The final predicted short-term wind power curve is obtained by combining the predicted components.To improve the model accuracy,IAOA is employed to optimize the hyperparameters of iTransformer.The proposed approach is validated using real-generation data from different seasons and different power stations inNorthwest China,and ablation experiments have been conducted.Furthermore,to validate the superiority of the proposed approach under different wind characteristics,real power generation data fromsouthwestChina are utilized for experiments.Thecomparative results with the other six state-of-the-art prediction models in experiments show that the proposed model well fits the true value of generation series and achieves high prediction accuracy.

Regional Storm Surge Forecast Method Based on a Neural Network and the Coupled ADCIRC-SWAN Model

Timely and accurate forecasting of storm surges can effectively prevent typhoon storm surges from causing large economic losses and casualties in coastal areas.At present,numerical model forecasting consumes too many resources and takes too long to compute,while neural network forecasting lacks regional data to train regional forecasting models.In this study,we used the DUAL wind model to build typhoon wind fields,and constructed a typhoon database of 75 processes in the northern South China Sea using the coupled Advanced Circulation-Simulating Waves Nearshore(ADCIRC-SWAN)model.Then,a neural network with a Res-U-Net structure was trained using the typhoon database to forecast the typhoon processes in the validation dataset,and an excellent storm surge forecasting effect was achieved in the Pearl River Estuary region.The storm surge forecasting effect of stronger typhoons was improved by adding a branch structure and transfer learning.

Non-crossing Quantile Regression Neural Network as a Calibration Tool for Ensemble Weather Forecasts

Despite the maturity of ensemble numerical weather prediction(NWP),the resulting forecasts are still,more often than not,under-dispersed.As such,forecast calibration tools have become popular.Among those tools,quantile regression(QR)is highly competitive in terms of both flexibility and predictive performance.Nevertheless,a long-standing problem of QR is quantile crossing,which greatly limits the interpretability of QR-calibrated forecasts.On this point,this study proposes a non-crossing quantile regression neural network(NCQRNN),for calibrating ensemble NWP forecasts into a set of reliable quantile forecasts without crossing.The overarching design principle of NCQRNN is to add on top of the conventional QRNN structure another hidden layer,which imposes a non-decreasing mapping between the combined output from nodes of the last hidden layer to the nodes of the output layer,through a triangular weight matrix with positive entries.The empirical part of the work considers a solar irradiance case study,in which four years of ensemble irradiance forecasts at seven locations,issued by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts,are calibrated via NCQRNN,as well as via an eclectic mix of benchmarking models,ranging from the naïve climatology to the state-of-the-art deep-learning and other non-crossing models.Formal and stringent forecast verification suggests that the forecasts post-processed via NCQRNN attain the maximum sharpness subject to calibration,amongst all competitors.Furthermore,the proposed conception to resolve quantile crossing is remarkably simple yet general,and thus has broad applicability as it can be integrated with many shallow-and deep-learning-based neural networks.

A Deep Learning Approach for Forecasting Thunderstorm Gusts in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region

Thunderstorm gusts are a common form of severe convective weather in the warm season in North China,and it is of great importance to correctly forecast them.At present,the forecasting of thunderstorm gusts is mainly based on traditional subjective methods,which fails to achieve high-resolution and high-frequency gridded forecasts based on multiple observation sources.In this paper,we propose a deep learning method called Thunderstorm Gusts TransU-net(TGTransUnet)to forecast thunderstorm gusts in North China based on multi-source gridded product data from the Institute of Urban Meteorology(IUM)with a lead time of 1 to 6 h.To determine the specific range of thunderstorm gusts,we combine three meteorological variables:radar reflectivity factor,lightning location,and 1-h maximum instantaneous wind speed from automatic weather stations(AWSs),and obtain a reasonable ground truth of thunderstorm gusts.Then,we transform the forecasting problem into an image-to-image problem in deep learning under the TG-TransUnet architecture,which is based on convolutional neural networks and a transformer.The analysis and forecast data of the enriched multi-source gridded comprehensive forecasting system for the period 2021–23 are then used as training,validation,and testing datasets.Finally,the performance of TG-TransUnet is compared with other methods.The results show that TG-TransUnet has the best prediction results at 1–6 h.The IUM is currently using this model to support the forecasting of thunderstorm gusts in North China.

Enhancing Deep Learning Soil Moisture Forecasting Models by Integrating Physics-based Models

Accurate soil moisture(SM)prediction is critical for understanding hydrological processes.Physics-based(PB)models exhibit large uncertainties in SM predictions arising from uncertain parameterizations and insufficient representation of land-surface processes.In addition to PB models,deep learning(DL)models have been widely used in SM predictions recently.However,few pure DL models have notably high success rates due to lacking physical information.Thus,we developed hybrid models to effectively integrate the outputs of PB models into DL models to improve SM predictions.To this end,we first developed a hybrid model based on the attention mechanism to take advantage of PB models at each forecast time scale(attention model).We further built an ensemble model that combined the advantages of different hybrid schemes(ensemble model).We utilized SM forecasts from the Global Forecast System to enhance the convolutional long short-term memory(ConvLSTM)model for 1–16 days of SM predictions.The performances of the proposed hybrid models were investigated and compared with two existing hybrid models.The results showed that the attention model could leverage benefits of PB models and achieved the best predictability of drought events among the different hybrid models.Moreover,the ensemble model performed best among all hybrid models at all forecast time scales and different soil conditions.It is highlighted that the ensemble model outperformed the pure DL model over 79.5%of in situ stations for 16-day predictions.These findings suggest that our proposed hybrid models can adequately exploit the benefits of PB model outputs to aid DL models in making SM predictions.

Assessment of ECMWF’s Precipitation Forecasting Performance for China from 2017 to 2022

This study used the China Meteorological Administration(CMA)three-source fusion gridded precipitation analysis data as a reference to evaluate the precipitation forecast performance of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts(ECMWF)model for China from 2017 to 2022.The main conclusions are as follows.The precipitation forecast capability of the ECMWF model for China has gradually improved from 2017 to 2022.Various scores such as bias,equitable threat score(ETS),and Fractions Skill Score(FSS)showed improvements for different categories of precipitation.The bias of light rain forecasts overall adjusted towards smaller values,and the increase in forecast scores was greater in the warm season than in the cold season.The ETS for torrential rain more intense categories significantly increased,although there were large fluctuations in bias across different months.The model exhibited higher precipitation bias in most areas of North China,indicating overprediction,while it showed lower bias in South China,indicating underprediction.The ETSs indicate that the model performed better in forecasting precipitation in the northeastern part of China without the influence of climatic background conditions.Comparison of the differences between the first period and the second period of the forecast shows that the precipitation amplitude in the ECMWF forecast shifted from slight underestimation to overestimation compared to that of CMPAS05,reducing the likelihood of missing extreme precipitation events.The improvement in ETS is mainly due to the reduction in bias and false alarm rates and,more importantly,an increase in the hit rate.From 2017 to 2022,the area coverage error of model precipitation forecast relative to observations showed a decreasing trend at different scales,while the FSS showed an increasing trend,with the highest FSS observed in 2021.The ETS followed a parabolic trend with increasing neighborhood radius,with the better ETS neighborhood radius generally being larger for moderate rain and heavy rain compared with light rain and torrential rain events.

Seasonal Characteristics of Forecasting Uncertainties in Surface PM_(2.5)Concentration Associated with Forecast Lead Time over the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region

Forecasting uncertainties among meteorological fields have long been recognized as the main limitation on the accuracy and predictability of air quality forecasts.However,the particular impact of meteorological forecasting uncertainties on air quality forecasts specific to different seasons is still not well known.In this study,a series of forecasts with different forecast lead times for January,April,July,and October of 2018 are conducted over the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei(BTH)region and the impacts of meteorological forecasting uncertainties on surface PM_(2.5)concentration forecasts with each lead time are investigated.With increased lead time,the forecasted PM_(2.5)concentrations significantly change and demonstrate obvious seasonal variations.In general,the forecasting uncertainties in monthly mean surface PM_(2.5)concentrations in the BTH region due to lead time are the largest(80%)in spring,followed by autumn(~50%),summer(~40%),and winter(20%).In winter,the forecasting uncertainties in total surface PM_(2.5)mass due to lead time are mainly due to the uncertainties in PBL heights and hence the PBL mixing of anthropogenic primary particles.In spring,the forecasting uncertainties are mainly from the impacts of lead time on lower-tropospheric northwesterly winds,thereby further enhancing the condensation production of anthropogenic secondary particles by the long-range transport of natural dust.In summer,the forecasting uncertainties result mainly from the decrease in dry and wet deposition rates,which are associated with the reduction of near-surface wind speed and precipitation rate.In autumn,the forecasting uncertainties arise mainly from the change in the transport of remote natural dust and anthropogenic particles,which is associated with changes in the large-scale circulation.

Promising Results Predict Role for Artificial Intelligence in Weather Forecasting

Artificial intelligence(AI)has already demonstrated its proficiency at difficult scientific tasks like predicting how proteins will fold and identifying new astronomical objects in masses of observational data[1].Now,recent results suggest that AI also excels at weather forecasting.For global predictions,GraphCast,an AI system developed by Google subsidiary DeepMind(London,UK),outperforms the state-of-the-art model from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts(ECMWF),providing more accurate projections of variables such as temperature and humidity 90%of the time[2,3].Other AI systems,including Pangu-Weather from the Chinese tech company Huawei(Shenzhen,China)[4],can also match or beat traditional global forecasting models.

Scientific Advances and Weather Services of the China Meteorological Administration’s National Forecasting Systems during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics

Since the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics was the first Winter Olympics in history held in continental winter monsoon climate conditions across complex terrain areas,there is a deficiency of relevant research,operational techniques,and experience.This made providing meteorological services for this event particularly challenging.The China Meteorological Administration(CMA)Earth System Modeling and Prediction Centre,achieved breakthroughs in research on short-and medium-term deterministic and ensemble numerical predictions.Several key technologies crucial for precise winter weather services during the Winter Olympics were developed.A comprehensive framework,known as the Operational System for High-Precision Weather Forecasting for the Winter Olympics,was established.Some of these advancements represent the highest level of capabilities currently available in China.The meteorological service provided to the Beijing 2022 Games also exceeded previous Winter Olympic Games in both variety and quality.This included achievements such as the“100-meter level,minute level”downscaled spatiotemporal resolution and forecasts spanning 1 to 15 days.Around 30 new technologies and over 60 kinds of products that align with the requirements of the Winter Olympics Organizing Committee were developed,and many of these techniques have since been integrated into the CMA’s operational national forecasting systems.These accomplishments were facilitated by a dedicated weather forecasting and research initiative,in conjunction with the preexisting real-time operational forecasting systems of the CMA.This program represents one of the five subprograms of the WMO’s high-impact weather forecasting demonstration project(SMART2022),and continues to play an important role in their Regional Association(RA)II Research Development Project(Hangzhou RDP).Therefore,the research accomplishments and meteorological service experiences from this program will be carried forward into forthcoming highimpact weather forecasting activities.This article provides an overview and assessment of this program and the operational national forecasting systems.

Comparison among the UECM Model, and the Composite Model in Forecasting Malaysian Imports

For more than a century, forecasting models have been crucial in a variety of fields. Models can offer the most accurate forecasting outcomes if error terms are normally distributed. Finding a good statistical model for time series predicting imports in Malaysia is the main target of this study. The decision made during this study mostly addresses the unrestricted error correction model (UECM), and composite model (Combined regression—ARIMA). The imports of Malaysia from the first quarter of 1991 to the third quarter of 2022 are employed in this study’s quarterly time series data. The forecasting outcomes of the current study demonstrated that the composite model offered more probabilistic data, which improved forecasting the volume of Malaysia’s imports. The composite model, and the UECM model in this study are linear models based on responses to Malaysia’s imports. Future studies might compare the performance of linear and nonlinear models in forecasting.

Impacts of multi-scenario land use change on ecosystem services and ecological security pattern: A case study of the Yellow River Delta

The Yellow River Delta(YRD), a critical economic zone along China's eastern coast, also functions as a vital ecological reserve in the lower Yellow River. Amidst rapid industrialization and urbanization, the region has witnessed significant land use/cover changes(LUCC), impacting ecosystem services(ES) and ecological security patterns(ESP). Investigating LUCC's effects on ES and ESP in the YRD is crucial for ecological security and sustainable development. This study utilized the PLUS model to simulate 2030 land use scenarios, including natural development(NDS), economic development(EDS), and ecological protection scenarios(EPS). Subsequently, the InVEST model and circuit theory were applied to assess ES and ESP under varying LUCC scenarios from 2010 to 2030. Findings indicate:(1) Notable LUCC from 2010 to 2030, marked by decreasing cropland and increasing construction land and water bodies.(2) From 2010 to 2020, improvements were observed in carbon storage,water yield, soil retention, and habitat quality, whereas 2020–2030 saw increases in water yield and soil retention but declines in habitat quality and carbon storage. Among the scenarios, EPS showed superior performance in all four ES.(3) Between 2010 and 2030, ecological sources, corridors, and pinchpoints expanded, displaying significant spatial heterogeneity. The EPS scenario yielded the most substantial increases in ecological sources,corridors, and pinchpoints, totaling 582.89 km^(2), 645.03 km^(2),and 64.43 km^(2), respectively. This study highlights the importance of EPS, offering insightful scientific guidance for the YRD's sustainable development.

Better use of experience from other reservoirs for accurate production forecasting by learn-to-learn method

To assess whether a development strategy will be profitable enough,production forecasting is a crucial and difficult step in the process.The development history of other reservoirs in the same class tends to be studied to make predictions accurate.However,the permeability field,well patterns,and development regime must all be similar for two reservoirs to be considered in the same class.This results in very few available experiences from other reservoirs even though there is a lot of historical information on numerous reservoirs because it is difficult to find such similar reservoirs.This paper proposes a learn-to-learn method,which can better utilize a vast amount of historical data from various reservoirs.Intuitively,the proposed method first learns how to learn samples before directly learning rules in samples.Technically,by utilizing gradients from networks with independent parameters and copied structure in each class of reservoirs,the proposed network obtains the optimal shared initial parameters which are regarded as transferable information across different classes.Based on that,the network is able to predict future production indices for the target reservoir by only training with very limited samples collected from reservoirs in the same class.Two cases further demonstrate its superiority in accuracy to other widely-used network methods.

Longitudinal dependence of the forecast accuracy of the ionospheric total electron content in the equatorial zone

The longitudinal dependence of the behavior of ionospheric parameters has been the subject of a number of works where significant variations are discovered.This also applies to the prediction of the ionospheric total electron content(TEC),which neural network methods have recently been widely used.However,the results are mainly presented for a limited set of meridians.This paper examines the longitudinal dependence of the TEC forecast accuracy in the equatorial zone.In this case,the methods are used that provided the best accuracy on three meridians:European(30°E),Southeastern(110°E)and American(75°W).Results for the stations considered are analyzed as a function of longitude using the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Global Ionosphere Map(JPL GIM)for 2015.These results are for 2 h ahead and 24 h ahead forecast.It was found that in this case,based on the metric values,three groups of architectures can be distinguished.The first group included long short-term memory(LSTM),gated recurrent unit(GRU),and temporal convolutional networks(TCN)models as a part of unidirectional deep learning models;the second group is based on the recurrent models from the first group,which were supplemented with a bidirectional algorithm,increasing the TEC forecasting accuracy by 2-3 times.The third group,which includes the bidirectional TCN architecture(BiTCN),provided the highest accuracy.For this architecture,according to data obtained for 9 equatorial stations,practical independence of the TEC prediction accuracy from longitude was observed under the following metrics(Mean Absolute Error MAE,Root Mean Square Error RMSE,Mean Absolute Percentage Error MAPE):MAE(2 h)is 0.2 TECU approximately;MAE(24 h)is 0.4 TECU approximately;RMSE(2 h)is less than 0.5 TECU except Niue station(RMSE(2 h)is 1 TECU approximately);RMSE(24 h)is in the range of 1.0-1.7 TECU;MAPE(2 h)<1%except Darwin station,MAPE(24 h)<2%.This result was confirmed by data from additional 5 stations that formed latitudinal chains in the equatorial part of the three meridians.The complete correspondence of the observational and predicted TEC values is illustrated using several stations for disturbed conditions on December 19-22,2015,which included the strongest magnetic storm in the second half of the year(min Dst=-155 nT).

Generalized load graphical forecasting method based on modal decomposition

In a“low-carbon”context,the power load is affected by the coupling of multiple factors,which gradually evolves from the traditional“pure load”to the generalized load with the dual characteristics of“load+power supply.”Traditional time-series forecasting methods are no longer suitable owing to the complexity and uncertainty associated with generalized loads.From the perspective of image processing,this study proposes a graphical short-term prediction method for generalized loads based on modal decomposition.First,the datasets are normalized and feature-filtered by comparing the results of Xtreme gradient boosting,gradient boosted decision tree,and random forest algorithms.Subsequently,the generalized load data are decomposed into three sets of modalities by modal decomposition,and red,green,and blue(RGB)images are generated using them as the pixel values of the R,G,and B channels.The generated images are diversified,and an optimized DenseNet neural network was used for training and prediction.Finally,the base load,wind power,and photovoltaic power generation data are selected,and the characteristic curves of the generalized load scenarios under different permeabilities of wind power and photovoltaic power generation are obtained using the density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise algorithm.Based on the proposed graphical forecasting method,the feasibility of the generalized load graphical forecasting method is verified by comparing it with the traditional time-series forecasting method.

The Forecast Skills and Predictability Sources of Marine Heatwaves in the NUIST-CFS1.0 Hindcasts

Using monthly observations and ensemble hindcasts of the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology Climate Forecast System(NUIST-CFS1.0) for the period 1983–2020, this study investigates the forecast skill of marine heatwaves(MHWs) over the globe and the predictability sources of the MHWs over the tropical oceans. The MHW forecasts are demonstrated to be skillful on seasonal-annual time scales, particularly in tropical oceans. The forecast skill of the MHWs over the tropical Pacific Ocean(TPO) remains high at lead times of 1–24 months, indicating a forecast better than random chance for up to two years. The forecast skill is subject to the spring predictability barrier of El Nino-Southern Oscillation(ENSO). The forecast skills for the MHWs over the tropical Indian Ocean(TIO), tropical Atlantic Ocean(TAO), and tropical Northwest Pacific(NWP) are lower than that in the TPO. A reliable forecast at lead times of up to two years is shown over the TIO, while a shorter reliable forecast window(less than 17 months) occurs for the TAO and NWP.Additionally, the forecast skills for the TIO, TAO, and NWP are seasonally dependent. Higher skills for the TIO and TAO appear in boreal spring, while a greater skill for the NWP emerges in late summer-early autumn. Further analyses suggest that ENSO serves as a critical source of predictability for MHWs over the TIO and TAO in spring and MHWs over the NWP in summer.