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Statistical forecasting of tropical rainfall using equatorial waves

Schlüter, Andreas; Klar, Manuel; Vogel, Peter; Gneiting, Tilmann; Fink, Andreas H.; Knippertz, Peter ORCID iD icon

Abstract:

Despite their high socio-economic importance, forecasts of tropical rainfall on a synoptic timescale are still quite poor. Due to the complex nature of convection, numerical weather prediction (NWP) models largely fail to deliver reliable and accurate precipitation forecasts for the tropics. In this study, we propose a new statistical method for the prediction of tropical rainfall using the information about the phasing of equatorial waves. For certain temporal and spatial scales, statistical forecast methods for tropical precipitation have skill comparable to complex and expensive numerical predictions. For example, recent work has shown that climatology or persistence forecasts, thus a very simple statistical model, performs as well as postprocessed ensemble forecasts from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) over tropical Africa. Thus, we believe that additional exploitation of information about the larger-scale atmospheric setting could lead to statistical forecast models of tropical precipitation that are comparable or even more accurate than current NWP forecasts. Predictability of tropical precipitation on the synoptic timescale is mainly governed by convectively coupled equatorial waves which modulate the distribution and intensity of rainfall. ... mehr


Zugehörige Institution(en) am KIT Institut für Meteorologie und Klimaforschung Troposphärenforschung (IMKTRO)
KIT-Zentrum Klima und Umwelt (ZKU)
Publikationstyp Poster
Publikationsjahr 2017
Sprache Englisch
Identifikator KITopen-ID: 1000077203
HGF-Programm 12.01.02 (POF III, LK 01) Proc.res.f.multisc.predictab.of weather
Veranstaltung European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2017, Vienna, Austria, 23rd - 28th April 2017
Bemerkung zur Veröffentlichung Geophysical Research Abstracts, 19(2017) EGU2017-16045
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