Sources of Bias in the Monthly CFSv2 Forecast Climatology

Abstract

AbstractForecast climatologies are used to remove systematic errors from forecasts and to express forecasts as departures from normal. Forecast climatologies are computed from hindcasts by various averaging, smoothing, and interpolation procedures. Here the Climate Forecast System, version 2 (CFSv2), monthly forecast climatology provided by the NCEP Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) is shown to be biased in the sense of systematically differing from the hindcasts that are used to compute it. These biases, which are unexpected, are primarily due to fitting harmonics to hindcast data that have been organized in a particular format, which on careful inspection is seen to introduce discontinuities. Biases in the monthly near-surface temperature forecast climatology reach 2°C over North America for March targets and start times at the end of January. Biases in the monthly Niño-3.4 forecast climatology are also largest for start times near calendar-month boundaries. A further undesirable consequence of this fitting procedure is that the EMC forecast climatology varies discontinuously with lead time for fixed target month. Two alternative methods for computing the forecast climatology are proposed and illustrated. The proposed methods more accurately fit the hindcast data and provide a clearer representation of the CFSv2 model climate drift toward lower Niño-3.4 values for starts in March and April and toward higher Niño-3.4 values for starts in June, July, and August.