Forecast sea surface temperature fields are produced on a monthly basis using the Zebiak and Cane (1987) coupled atmosphere-ocean model. The model is presently initialized using the FSU pseudo-stress product for the tropical Pacific. With this forcing the ocean model is spun up to the beginning of the forecast period; the atmopshere model is similarly spun up using the simulated SSTA from the forced ocean run. Thus initialized the coupled model runs ahead in time with no data insertion, producing a forecast for the evolution of the coupled atmosphere-ocean system. SSTA fields from individual forecasts are first composited by lag-averaging the results from six consecutive monthly initial conditions. The composited forecasts for lead times of 3,6,9, and 12 months are then post-processed using a singular value decomposition analysis, to remove systematic spatial pattern errors and to map the idealized model domain onto the real one. The results are archived from January 1972 (verification time) to the most recent month available.
The results are here.
steve@ldeo.columbia.edu