Identification

Title

Predicting near-term changes in the Earth system: A large ensemble of initialized decadal prediction simulations using the Community Earth System Model

Abstract

The objective of near-term climate prediction is to improve our fore-knowledge, from years to a decade or more in advance, of impactful climate changes that can in general be attributed to a combination of internal and externally forced variability. Predictions initialized using observations of past climate states are tested by comparing their ability to reproduce past climate evolution with that of uninitialized simulations in which the same radiative forcings are applied. A new set of decadal prediction (DP) simulations has recently been completed using the Community Earth System Model (CESM) and is now available to the community. This new large-ensemble (LE) set (CESM-DPLE) is composed of historical simulations that are integrated forward for 10 years following initialization on 1 November of each year between 1954 and 2015. CESM-DPLE represents the “initialized” counterpart to the widely studied CESM Large Ensemble (CESM-LE); both simulation sets have 40-member ensembles, and they use identical model code and radiative forcings. Comparing CESM-DPLE to CESM-LE highlights the impacts of initialization on prediction skill and indicates that robust assessment and interpretation of DP skill may require much larger ensembles than current protocols recommend. CESM-DPLE exhibits significant and potentially useful prediction skill for a wide range of fields, regions, and time scales, and it shows widespread improvement over simpler benchmark forecasts as well as over a previous initialized system that was submitted to phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). The new DP system offers new capabilities that will be of interest to a broad community pursuing Earth system prediction research.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d77947mw

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2018-09-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact