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Did a skillful prediction of sea surface temperatures help or hinder forecasting of the 2012 Midwestern US drought?

Did a skillful prediction of sea surface temperatures help or hinder forecasting of the 2012 Midwestern US drought?
Did a skillful prediction of sea surface temperatures help or hinder forecasting of the 2012 Midwestern US drought?

The latest drought to hit the Midwestern (MW) US region, in 2012, was driven by the least summer precipitation for the last three decades with $20 billion in agriculture losses. For 2012, the summer forecast skill for Pacific and Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies and low MW precipitation is remarkably good for some National Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) models, but this is not generally repeated for other drought years, with some models predicting extreme wet anomalies, despite skill in predicting Pacific and Atlantic SST anomalies. In order to diagnose the origins of the limited skill of the NMME models, we use singular value decomposition (SVD) for global SSTs and continental US (CONUS) precipitation from observational data and NMME hindcasts (1982-2012). Observational data indicate that there is an insignificant coupling between global SSTs and MW precipitation during summer over the last 30 years. However, the NMME climate forecast models show strong coupling and therefore predicted the 2012 drought fortuitously for the wrong reason (a strong pan-Pacific El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-like pattern). The observational data indicate that the strength of ENSO teleconnections with CONUS precipitation has weakened and the precipitation footprint has shifted over the past decades, suggesting that the transient nature of teleconnections may play a role in poor model skill.

midwest US drought, NMME, pacific SST teleconnections, singular value Decomposition
1748-9326
Kam, Jonghun
2ca1444e-be4f-4250-9fa5-c5b9dca224fe
Sheffield, Justin
dd66575b-a4dc-4190-ad95-df2d6aaaaa6b
Yuan, Xing
cd29f8ca-815f-4694-9ea9-4489be804294
Wood, Eric F.
ee59ebb9-367e-48ce-beab-22666be5095d
Kam, Jonghun
2ca1444e-be4f-4250-9fa5-c5b9dca224fe
Sheffield, Justin
dd66575b-a4dc-4190-ad95-df2d6aaaaa6b
Yuan, Xing
cd29f8ca-815f-4694-9ea9-4489be804294
Wood, Eric F.
ee59ebb9-367e-48ce-beab-22666be5095d

Kam, Jonghun, Sheffield, Justin, Yuan, Xing and Wood, Eric F. (2014) Did a skillful prediction of sea surface temperatures help or hinder forecasting of the 2012 Midwestern US drought? Environmental Research Letters, 9 (3), [034005]. (doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/3/034005).

Record type: Article

Abstract

The latest drought to hit the Midwestern (MW) US region, in 2012, was driven by the least summer precipitation for the last three decades with $20 billion in agriculture losses. For 2012, the summer forecast skill for Pacific and Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies and low MW precipitation is remarkably good for some National Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) models, but this is not generally repeated for other drought years, with some models predicting extreme wet anomalies, despite skill in predicting Pacific and Atlantic SST anomalies. In order to diagnose the origins of the limited skill of the NMME models, we use singular value decomposition (SVD) for global SSTs and continental US (CONUS) precipitation from observational data and NMME hindcasts (1982-2012). Observational data indicate that there is an insignificant coupling between global SSTs and MW precipitation during summer over the last 30 years. However, the NMME climate forecast models show strong coupling and therefore predicted the 2012 drought fortuitously for the wrong reason (a strong pan-Pacific El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-like pattern). The observational data indicate that the strength of ENSO teleconnections with CONUS precipitation has weakened and the precipitation footprint has shifted over the past decades, suggesting that the transient nature of teleconnections may play a role in poor model skill.

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More information

Published date: March 2014
Keywords: midwest US drought, NMME, pacific SST teleconnections, singular value Decomposition

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 480786
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/480786
ISSN: 1748-9326
PURE UUID: 1c5b19a2-3fba-439b-b99d-e1241a4c3543
ORCID for Justin Sheffield: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-2400-0630

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 09 Aug 2023 17:13
Last modified: 06 Jun 2024 01:54

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Contributors

Author: Jonghun Kam
Author: Xing Yuan
Author: Eric F. Wood

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