A strong El Niño phenomenon is expected to develop during the austral summer. This study seeks to address the two main questions. 1) How strong will the 2016 event be? 2) With how much skill and confidence can a really strong event be predicted? A state-of-the-art coupled ocean-atmosphere model’s Niño3.4 SST forecast for January 2016 is presented, followed by an evaluation of the model’s ability to have predicted events of similar magnitude in the past. The January forecast, initialized in July 2015, shows a Niño3.4 SST anomaly larger than the 75th percentile of the observed climatological record. Verification over 18 years of Niño3.4 SST hindcasts suggest that such forecasts may be made with high confidence even at several months lead-time.
Reference:
Mpheshea, L.E. and Landman, W.A., 2015. Predicting the extreme 2015/16 El Nino event. In: 31st Conference of the South African Society for Atmospheric Science, Hennops River Valley, Centurion, South Africa, 21-22 September 2015
Mpheshea, L., & Landman, W. (2015). Predicting the extreme 2015/16 El Nino event. SASAS. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/8792
Mpheshea, LE, and WA Landman. "Predicting the extreme 2015/16 El Nino event." (2015): http://hdl.handle.net/10204/8792
Mpheshea L, Landman W, Predicting the extreme 2015/16 El Nino event; SASAS; 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/8792 .
