Examining the Value of Global Seasonal Reference Evapotranspiration Forecasts to Support FEWS NET’s Food Insecurity Outlooks

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) team provides food insecurity outlooks for several developing countries in Africa, central Asia, and Central America. This study describes development of a new global reference evapotranspiration (ET 0 ) seasonal reforecast and skill evaluation with a particular emphasis on the potential use of this dataset by FEWS NET to support food insecurity early warning. The ET 0 reforecasts span the 1982–2009 period and are calculated following the American Society for Civil Engineers formulation of the Penman–Monteith method driven by seasonal climate forecasts of monthly mean temperature, humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction CFSv2 model and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration GEOS-5 model. The skill evaluation, using deterministic and probabilistic scores, focuses on the December–February (DJF), March–May (MAM), June–August (JJA), and September–November seasons. The results indicate that ET 0 forecasts are a promising tool for early warning of drought and food insecurity. Globally, the regions where forecasts are most skillful (correlation > 0.35 at leads of 2 months) include the western United States, northern parts of South America, parts of the Sahel region, and southern Africa. The FEWS NET regions where forecasts are most skillful (correlation > 0.35 at lead 3) include northern sub-Saharan Africa (DJF; dry season), Central America (DJF; dry season), parts of East Africa (JJA; wet season), southern Africa (JJA; dry season), and central Asia (MAM; wet season). A case study over parts of East Africa for the JJA season shows that ET 0 forecasts in combination with the precipitation forecasts would have provided early warning of recent severe drought events (e.g., in 2002, 2004, 2009) that contributed to substantial food insecurity in the region.