There is growing demand for seasonal forecast products for marine applications. The availability of consistent and sufficiently long observational records of ocean variables permits the assessment of the spatial distribution of the skill of ocean variables from seasonal forecasts. Here we use state-of-the-art temporal records of sea surface temperature (SST), sea surface height (SSH) and upper 300m ocean heat content (OHC) to...

Subseasonal to seasonal (S2S) prediction of droughts and floods is one of the major challenges of weather and climate prediction. Recent studies suggest that the springtime land surface temperature/subsurface temperature (LST/SUBT) over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) can be a new source of S2S predictability. The project “Impact of Initialized Land Surface Temperature and Snowpack on Subseasonal to Seasonal Prediction (LS4P)” was in...

The prediction skill for precipitation anomalies in late spring and summer months—a significant component of extreme climate events—has remained stubbornly low for years. This paper presents a new idea that utilizes information on boreal spring land surface temperature/subsurface temperature (LST/SUBT) anomalies over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) to improve prediction of subsequent summer droughts/floods over several regions over t...

Modelling rainfall extremes and dry periods over the Southeast Asia (SEA) region is challenging due to the characteristics of the region, which consists of the Maritime Continent and a mountainous region; it also experiences monsoonal conditions, as it is located between the Asian summer monsoon and the Australian summer monsoon. Representing rainfall extremes is important for flood and drought assessments in the region. This...

North Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) underwent pronounced multidecadal variability during the twentieth and early twenty-first century. We examine the impacts of this Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV), also referred to as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), on climate in an ensemble of five coupled climate models at both low and high spatial resolution. We use a SST nudging scheme specified by the Coup...

Ocean heat content (OHC) anomalies typically persist for several months, making this variable a vital component of seasonal predictability in both the ocean and the atmosphere. However, the ability of seasonal forecasting systems to predict OHC remains largely untested. Here, we present a global assessment of OHC predictability in two state-of-the-art and fully-coupled seasonal forecasting systems. Overall, we find that dynami...

Representing the rainy season of the maritime continent is a challenge for global and regional climate models. Here, we compare regional climate models (RCMs) based on the coupled model intercomparison project phase 5 (CMIP5) model generation with high‐resolution global climate models with a comparable spatial resolution from the HighResMIP experiment. The onset and the total precipitation of the rainy season for both model ex...

Accurate forecasting of variations in Indian monsoon precipitation and progression on seasonal time scales remains a challenge for prediction centres. We examine prediction skill for the seasonal-mean Indian summer monsoon and its onset in the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) seasonal forecasting system 5 (SEAS5). We analyse summer hindcasts initialised on 1st of May, with 51 ensemble members, for the...

Simulation of past climate is an important tool for the validation of climate models. The comparison with observed daily values allows us to assess the reliability of their projections on climatic extremes in a future climate. The frequency and amplitude of extreme events are fundamental aspects that climate simulations need to reproduce as they have high impacts on economy and society. The ability to simulate them will help p...

This study investigates how teleconnections linking tropical rainfall anomalies and wintertime circulation in the northern extra-tropics are represented in historical simulations for the period 1950–2010 run by partners of the EU-funded PRIMAVERA project, following the HighResMIP protocol of CMIP6. The analysis focusses on teleconnections from the western/central Indian Ocean in mid-winter and from the NINO4 region in both the...