Seasonal forecasting has many major applications, such as to inform public health and agriculture decisions that are based on the likelihood of future climate extremes, and to predict sea ice coverage. There are known linkages between springtime Arctic ozone in the upper atmosphere and Northern Hemisphere regional surface temperatures in the following months. A new study just accepted for publication, involving Cory Baggett and Elizabeth Barnes, partially funded by the MAPP program as part of the S2S Prediction Task Force specifically finds usefulness in the application to seasonal prediction of temperature. The study uses both a state-of-the-art climate model and observations, to investigate whether these linkages can be useful for seasonal forecasting of regional surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere, including North America. Using a predictive model, results show good agreement between the model and observations. Results also show that March ozone can forecast the sign of the April surface temperature anomaly well in parts of Eurasia. Ultimately, this indicates that springtime Northern Hemisphere seasonal predictions of surface temperature can be improved in some locations using stratospheric ozone information, which is consistently measured to a high degree of accuracy.

Read the paper here>>
 

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About MAPP
The Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) Program is a competitive research program in NOAA Research's Climate Program Office. MAPP's mission is to enhance the Nation's and NOAA's capability to understand, predict, and project variability and long-term changes in Earth's system and mitigate human and economic impacts. To achieve its mission, MAPP supports foundational research, transition of research to applications, and engagement across other parts of NOAA, among partner agencies, and with the external research community. MAPP plays a crucial role in enabling national preparedness for extreme events like drought and longer-term climate changes. For more information, please visit www.cpo.noaa.gov/MAPP.

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