Climate Predictions with Multimodel Ensembles

Abstract

Several methods of combining individual forecasts from a group of climate models to produce an ensemble forecast are considered. These methods are applied to an ensemble of 500-hPa geopotential height forecasts derived from the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) integrations performed by 10 different modeling groups. Forecasts are verified against reanalyses from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Forecast skill is measured by means of error variance. In the Tropics, the simple ensemble mean produces the most skillful forecasts. In the extratropics, the regression-improved ensemble mean performs best. The ?superensemble? forecast that is obtained by optimally weighting the individual ensemble members does not perform as well as either the simple ensemble mean or the regression-improved ensemble mean. The sample size evidently is too small to estimate reliably the relatively large number of optimal weights required for the superensemble approach.