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Skillful regional prediction of Arctic sea ice on seasonal timescales
Author(s) -
Bushuk Mitchell,
Msadek Rym,
Winton Michael,
Vecchi Gabriel A.,
Gudgel Rich,
Rosati Anthony,
Yang Xiaosong
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2017gl073155
Subject(s) - climatology , sea ice , forecast skill , arctic ice pack , arctic , anomaly (physics) , environmental science , geophysical fluid dynamics , arctic sea ice decline , geology , initialization , oceanography , drift ice , physics , condensed matter physics , computer science , programming language
Recent Arctic sea ice seasonal prediction efforts and forecast skill assessments have primarily focused on pan‐Arctic sea ice extent (SIE). In this work, we move toward stakeholder‐relevant spatial scales, investigating the regional forecast skill of Arctic sea ice in a Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) seasonal prediction system. Using a suite of retrospective initialized forecasts spanning 1981–2015 made with a coupled atmosphere‐ocean‐sea ice‐land model, we show that predictions of detrended regional SIE are skillful at lead times up to 11 months. Regional prediction skill is highly region and target month dependent and generically exceeds the skill of an anomaly persistence forecast. We show for the first time that initializing the ocean subsurface in a seasonal prediction system can yield significant regional skill for winter SIE. Similarly, as suggested by previous work, we find that sea ice thickness initial conditions provide a crucial source of skill for regional summer SIE.