Articles | Volume 17, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-17-41-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-17-41-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
07 Jan 2026
Research article |
| 07 Jan 2026
| 07 Jan 2026
Seamless climate information from months to multiple years: constraining decadal predictions with seasonal predictions and past observations, and their comparison to multi-annual predictions
Carlos Delgado-Torres
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Barcelona, Spain
Markus G. Donat
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Barcelona, Spain
Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain
Núria Pérez-Zanón
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Barcelona, Spain
Verónica Torralba
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Barcelona, Spain
Roberto Bilbao
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Barcelona, Spain
Pierre-Antoine Bretonnière
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Barcelona, Spain
Margarida Samsó-Cabré
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Barcelona, Spain
Albert Soret
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Barcelona, Spain
Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Barcelona, Spain
Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain
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To manage Earth in the Anthropocene, new tools, new institutions, and new forms of international cooperation will be required. Earth Virtualization Engines is proposed as an international federation of centers of excellence to empower all people to respond to the immense and urgent challenges posed by climate change.
Roberto Bilbao, Pablo Ortega, Didier Swingedouw, Leon Hermanson, Panos Athanasiadis, Rosie Eade, Marion Devilliers, Francisco Doblas-Reyes, Nick Dunstone, An-Chi Ho, William Merryfield, Juliette Mignot, Dario Nicolì, Margarida Samsó, Reinel Sospedra-Alfonso, Xian Wu, and Stephen Yeager
Earth Syst. Dynam., 15, 501–525, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-501-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-501-2024, 2024
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In recent decades three major volcanic eruptions have occurred: Mount Agung in 1963, El Chichón in 1982 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991. In this article we explore the climatic impacts of these volcanic eruptions with a purposefully designed set of simulations from six CMIP6 decadal prediction systems. We analyse the radiative and dynamical responses and show that including the volcanic forcing in these predictions is important to reproduce the observed surface temperature variations.
Mario C. Acosta, Sergi Palomas, Stella V. Paronuzzi Ticco, Gladys Utrera, Joachim Biercamp, Pierre-Antoine Bretonniere, Reinhard Budich, Miguel Castrillo, Arnaud Caubel, Francisco Doblas-Reyes, Italo Epicoco, Uwe Fladrich, Sylvie Joussaume, Alok Kumar Gupta, Bryan Lawrence, Philippe Le Sager, Grenville Lister, Marie-Pierre Moine, Jean-Christophe Rioual, Sophie Valcke, Niki Zadeh, and Venkatramani Balaji
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 3081–3098, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-3081-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-3081-2024, 2024
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We present a collection of performance metrics gathered during the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6), a worldwide initiative to study climate change. We analyse the metrics that resulted from collaboration efforts among many partners and models and describe our findings to demonstrate the utility of our study for the scientific community. The research contributes to understanding climate modelling performance on the current high-performance computing (HPC) architectures.
Elsa Mohino, Paul-Arthur Monerie, Juliette Mignot, Moussa Diakhaté, Markus Donat, Christopher David Roberts, and Francisco Doblas-Reyes
Earth Syst. Dynam., 15, 15–40, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-15-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-15-2024, 2024
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The impact of the Atlantic multidecadal variability (AMV) on the rainfall distribution and timing of the West African monsoon is not well known. Analysing model output, we find that a positive AMV enhances the number of wet days, daily rainfall intensity, and extremes over the Sahel and tends to prolong the monsoon length through later demise. Heavy rainfall events increase all over the Sahel, while moderate ones only occur in the north. Model biases affect the skill in simulating AMV impact.
Aleksander Lacima, Hervé Petetin, Albert Soret, Dene Bowdalo, Oriol Jorba, Zhaoyue Chen, Raúl F. Méndez Turrubiates, Hicham Achebak, Joan Ballester, and Carlos Pérez García-Pando
Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 2689–2718, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-2689-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-2689-2023, 2023
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Understanding how air pollution varies across space and time is of key importance for the safeguarding of human health. This work arose in the context of the project EARLY-ADAPT, for which the Barcelona Supercomputing Center developed an air pollution database covering all of Europe. Through different statistical methods, we compared two global pollution models against measurements from ground stations and found significant discrepancies between the observed and the modeled surface pollution.
Alvaro Criado, Jan Mateu Armengol, Hervé Petetin, Daniel Rodriguez-Rey, Jaime Benavides, Marc Guevara, Carlos Pérez García-Pando, Albert Soret, and Oriol Jorba
Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 2193–2213, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-2193-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-2193-2023, 2023
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This work aims to derive and evaluate a general statistical post-processing tool specifically designed for the street scale that can be applied to any urban air quality system. Our data fusion methodology corrects NO2 fields based on continuous hourly observations and experimental campaigns. This study enables us to obtain exceedance probability maps of air quality standards. In 2019, 13 % of the Barcelona area had a 70 % or higher probability of exceeding the annual legal NO2 limit of 40 µg/m3.
Hervé Petetin, Marc Guevara, Steven Compernolle, Dene Bowdalo, Pierre-Antoine Bretonnière, Santiago Enciso, Oriol Jorba, Franco Lopez, Albert Soret, and Carlos Pérez García-Pando
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 3905–3935, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-3905-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-3905-2023, 2023
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This study analyses the potential of the TROPOMI space sensor for monitoring the variability of NO2 pollution over the Iberian Peninsula. A reduction of NO2 levels is observed during the weekend and in summer, especially over most urbanized areas, in agreement with surface observations. An enhancement of NO2 is found during summer with TROPOMI over croplands, potentially related to natural soil NO emissions, which illustrates the outstanding value of TROPOMI for complementing surface networks.
Eva Sebok, Hans Jørgen Henriksen, Ernesto Pastén-Zapata, Peter Berg, Guillaume Thirel, Anthony Lemoine, Andrea Lira-Loarca, Christiana Photiadou, Rafael Pimentel, Paul Royer-Gaspard, Erik Kjellström, Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen, Jean Philippe Vidal, Philippe Lucas-Picher, Markus G. Donat, Giovanni Besio, María José Polo, Simon Stisen, Yvan Caballero, Ilias G. Pechlivanidis, Lars Troldborg, and Jens Christian Refsgaard
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 5605–5625, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-5605-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-5605-2022, 2022
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Hydrological models projecting the impact of changing climate carry a lot of uncertainty. Thus, these models usually have a multitude of simulations using different future climate data. This study used the subjective opinion of experts to assess which climate and hydrological models are the most likely to correctly predict climate impacts, thereby easing the computational burden. The experts could select more likely hydrological models, while the climate models were deemed equally probable.
Rashed Mahmood, Markus G. Donat, Pablo Ortega, Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes, Carlos Delgado-Torres, Margarida Samsó, and Pierre-Antoine Bretonnière
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 1437–1450, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1437-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1437-2022, 2022
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Near-term climate change projections are strongly affected by the uncertainty from internal climate variability. Here we present a novel approach to reduce such uncertainty by constraining decadal-scale variability in the projections using observations. The constrained ensembles show significant added value over the unconstrained ensemble in predicting global climate 2 decades ahead. We also show the applicability of regional constraints for attributing predictability to certain ocean regions.
Hervé Petetin, Dene Bowdalo, Pierre-Antoine Bretonnière, Marc Guevara, Oriol Jorba, Jan Mateu Armengol, Margarida Samso Cabre, Kim Serradell, Albert Soret, and Carlos Pérez Garcia-Pando
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 11603–11630, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-11603-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-11603-2022, 2022
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This study investigates the extent to which ozone forecasts provided by the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) can be improved using surface observations and state-of-the-art statistical methods. Through a case study over the Iberian Peninsula in 2018–2019, it unambiguously demonstrates the value of these methods for improving the raw CAMS O3 forecasts while at the same time highlighting the complexity of improving the detection of the highest O3 concentrations.
Núria Pérez-Zanón, Louis-Philippe Caron, Silvia Terzago, Bert Van Schaeybroeck, Llorenç Lledó, Nicolau Manubens, Emmanuel Roulin, M. Carmen Alvarez-Castro, Lauriane Batté, Pierre-Antoine Bretonnière, Susana Corti, Carlos Delgado-Torres, Marta Domínguez, Federico Fabiano, Ignazio Giuntoli, Jost von Hardenberg, Eroteida Sánchez-García, Verónica Torralba, and Deborah Verfaillie
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 6115–6142, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-6115-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-6115-2022, 2022
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CSTools (short for Climate Service Tools) is an R package that contains process-based methods for climate forecast calibration, bias correction, statistical and stochastic downscaling, optimal forecast combination, and multivariate verification, as well as basic and advanced tools to obtain tailored products. In addition to describing the structure and methods in the package, we also present three use cases to illustrate the seasonal climate forecast post-processing for specific purposes.
Enza Di Tomaso, Jerónimo Escribano, Sara Basart, Paul Ginoux, Francesca Macchia, Francesca Barnaba, Francesco Benincasa, Pierre-Antoine Bretonnière, Arnau Buñuel, Miguel Castrillo, Emilio Cuevas, Paola Formenti, María Gonçalves, Oriol Jorba, Martina Klose, Lucia Mona, Gilbert Montané Pinto, Michail Mytilinaios, Vincenzo Obiso, Miriam Olid, Nick Schutgens, Athanasios Votsis, Ernest Werner, and Carlos Pérez García-Pando
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 2785–2816, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-2785-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-2785-2022, 2022
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MONARCH reanalysis of desert dust aerosols extends the existing observation-based information for mineral dust monitoring by providing 3-hourly upper-air, surface and total column key geophysical variables of the dust cycle over Northern Africa, the Middle East and Europe, at a 0.1° horizontal resolution in a rotated grid, from 2007 to 2016. This work provides evidence of the high accuracy of this data set and its suitability for air quality and health and climate service applications.
Nicolau Pineda, Juan Carlos Peña, Xavier Soler, Montse Aran, and Núria Pérez-Zanón
Adv. Sci. Res., 19, 39–49, https://doi.org/10.5194/asr-19-39-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/asr-19-39-2022, 2022
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Wildfire origins can be related to human activity or to natural phenomena, like lightning. Under favourable environmental conditions, lightning ignitions can develop into a fire. In the present study, we analyse the kind of weather that favours wildfires ignited by lightning in Catalonia. We have found that most fires occur under three types of weather. These results help to improve our understanding of lightning fires and are of great assistance to wildfire management agencies.
Ralf Döscher, Mario Acosta, Andrea Alessandri, Peter Anthoni, Thomas Arsouze, Tommi Bergman, Raffaele Bernardello, Souhail Boussetta, Louis-Philippe Caron, Glenn Carver, Miguel Castrillo, Franco Catalano, Ivana Cvijanovic, Paolo Davini, Evelien Dekker, Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes, David Docquier, Pablo Echevarria, Uwe Fladrich, Ramon Fuentes-Franco, Matthias Gröger, Jost v. Hardenberg, Jenny Hieronymus, M. Pasha Karami, Jukka-Pekka Keskinen, Torben Koenigk, Risto Makkonen, François Massonnet, Martin Ménégoz, Paul A. Miller, Eduardo Moreno-Chamarro, Lars Nieradzik, Twan van Noije, Paul Nolan, Declan O'Donnell, Pirkka Ollinaho, Gijs van den Oord, Pablo Ortega, Oriol Tintó Prims, Arthur Ramos, Thomas Reerink, Clement Rousset, Yohan Ruprich-Robert, Philippe Le Sager, Torben Schmith, Roland Schrödner, Federico Serva, Valentina Sicardi, Marianne Sloth Madsen, Benjamin Smith, Tian Tian, Etienne Tourigny, Petteri Uotila, Martin Vancoppenolle, Shiyu Wang, David Wårlind, Ulrika Willén, Klaus Wyser, Shuting Yang, Xavier Yepes-Arbós, and Qiong Zhang
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 2973–3020, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2973-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2973-2022, 2022
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The Earth system model EC-Earth3 is documented here. Key performance metrics show physical behavior and biases well within the frame known from recent models. With improved physical and dynamic features, new ESM components, community tools, and largely improved physical performance compared to the CMIP5 version, EC-Earth3 represents a clear step forward for the only European community ESM. We demonstrate here that EC-Earth3 is suited for a range of tasks in CMIP6 and beyond.
Josep Cos, Francisco Doblas-Reyes, Martin Jury, Raül Marcos, Pierre-Antoine Bretonnière, and Margarida Samsó
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 321–340, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-321-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-321-2022, 2022
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The Mediterranean has been identified as being more affected by climate change than other regions. We find that amplified warming during summer and annual precipitation declines are expected for the 21st century and that the magnitude of the changes will mainly depend on greenhouse gas emissions. By applying a method giving more importance to models with greater performance and independence, we find that the differences between the last two community modelling efforts are reduced in the region.
Katja Weigel, Lisa Bock, Bettina K. Gier, Axel Lauer, Mattia Righi, Manuel Schlund, Kemisola Adeniyi, Bouwe Andela, Enrico Arnone, Peter Berg, Louis-Philippe Caron, Irene Cionni, Susanna Corti, Niels Drost, Alasdair Hunter, Llorenç Lledó, Christian Wilhelm Mohr, Aytaç Paçal, Núria Pérez-Zanón, Valeriu Predoi, Marit Sandstad, Jana Sillmann, Andreas Sterl, Javier Vegas-Regidor, Jost von Hardenberg, and Veronika Eyring
Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 3159–3184, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-3159-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-3159-2021, 2021
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This work presents new diagnostics for the Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) v2.0 on the hydrological cycle, extreme events, impact assessment, regional evaluations, and ensemble member selection. The ESMValTool v2.0 diagnostics are developed by a large community of scientists aiming to facilitate the evaluation and comparison of Earth system models (ESMs) with a focus on the ESMs participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP).
Cited articles
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Acosta Navarro, J. C., Aranyossy, A., De Luca, P., Donat, M. G., Hrast Essenfelder, A., Mahmood, R., Toreti, A., and Volpi, D.: Seamless seasonal to multi-annual predictions of temperature and Standardized Precipitation Index by constraining transient climate model simulations, Earth Syst. Dynam., 16, 1723–1737, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1723-2025, 2025. a
Barnston, A. G. and Dool, H. V. D.: A Degeneracy in Cross-Validated Skill in Regression-based Forecasts, Journal of Climate, 6, 963–977, https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(1993)006<0963:ADICVS>2.0.CO;2, 1993. a
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Befort, D. J., O'Reilly, C. H., and Weisheimer, A.: Constraining Projections Using Decadal Predictions, Geophysical Research Letters, 47, e2020GL087900, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL087900, 2020. a, b
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Boening, C., Willis, J. K., Landerer, F. W., Nerem, R. S., and Fasullo, J.: The 2011 la Niña: So strong, the oceans fell, Geophysical Research Letters, 39, 19602, https://doi.org/10.1029/2012GL053055, 2012. a
Boer, G. J., Smith, D. M., Cassou, C., Doblas-Reyes, F., Danabasoglu, G., Kirtman, B., Kushnir, Y., Kimoto, M., Meehl, G. A., Msadek, R., Mueller, W. A., Taylor, K. E., Zwiers, F., Rixen, M., Ruprich-Robert, Y., and Eade, R.: The Decadal Climate Prediction Project (DCPP) contribution to CMIP6, Geosci. Model Dev., 9, 3751–3777, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-3751-2016, 2016. a
Brajard, J., Counillon, F., Wang, Y., and Kimmritz, M.: Enhancing Seasonal Forecast Skills by Optimally Weighting the Ensemble from Fresh Data, Weather and Forecasting, 38, 1241–1252, https://doi.org/10.1175/WAF-D-22-0166.1, 2023. a
Cos, P., Marcos-Matamoros, R., Donat, M., Mahmood, R., and Doblas-Reyes, F. J.: Near-Term Mediterranean Summer Temperature Climate Projections: A Comparison of Constraining Methods, Journal of Climate, 37, 4367–4388, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0494.1, 2024. a
Delgado-Torres, C., Donat, M., Gonzalez-Reviriego, N., Caron, L.-P., Athanasiadis, P., Bretonnière, P.-A., Dunstone, N., Ho, A.-C., Nicoli, D., Pankatz, K., Paxian, A., Pérez-Zanón, N., Cabré, M., Solaraju-Murali, B., Soret, A., and Doblas-Reyes, F.: Multi-Model Forecast Quality Assessment of CMIP6 Decadal Predictions, Journal of Climate, 35, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0811.1, 2022. a, b
Delgado-Torres, C., Donat, M. G., Soret, A., González-Reviriego, N., Bretonnière, P. A., Ho, A. C., Pérez-Zanón, N., Cabré, M. S., and Doblas-Reyes, F. J.: Multi-annual predictions of the frequency and intensity of daily temperature and precipitation extremes, Environmental Research Letters, 18, 034031, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ACBBE1, 2023. a
Delgado-Torres, C., Octenjak, S., Marcos-Matamoros, R., Pérez-Zanón, N., Baulenas, E., Doblas-Reyes, F. J., Donat, M. G., Lwiza, L. M., Milders, N., Soret, A., Whittlesey, S., and Bojovic, D.: Supporting food security with multi-annual climate information: Co-production of climate services for the Southern African Development Community, Science of The Total Environment, 975, 179259, https://doi.org/10.1016/J.SCITOTENV.2025.179259, 2025. a, b, c
Dirmeyer, P. A. and Ford, T. W.: A Technique for Seamless Forecast Construction and Validation from Weather to Monthly Time Scales, Monthly Weather Review, 148, 3589–3603, https://doi.org/10.1175/MWR-D-19-0076.1, 2020. a
Doblas-Reyes, F. J., Andreu-Burillo, I., Chikamoto, Y., García-Serrano, J., Guemas, V., Kimoto, M., Mochizuki, T., Rodrigues, L. R. L., and van Oldenborgh, G. J.: Initialized near-term regional climate change prediction, Nature Communications, 4, 1–9, https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2704, 2013. a
Donat, M. G., Mahmood, R., Cos, P., Ortega, P., and Doblas-Reyes, F.: Improving the forecast quality of near-term climate projections by constraining internal variability based on decadal predictions and observations, Environmental Research: Climate, 3, 035013, https://doi.org/10.1088/2752-5295/AD5463, 2024. a, b
Duan, W. and Wei, C.: The “spring predictability barrier” for ENSO predictions and its possible mechanism: Results from a fully coupled model, International Journal of Climatology, 33, 1280–1292, https://doi.org/10.1002/JOC.3513, 2013. a
Ehsan, M. A., L'Heureux, M. L., Tippett, M. K., Robertson, A. W., and Turmelle, J.: Real-time ENSO forecast skill evaluated over the last two decades, with focus on the onset of ENSO events, npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 7, 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1038/S41612-024-00845-5, 2024. a, b
Eyring, V., Bony, S., Meehl, G. A., Senior, C. A., Stevens, B., Stouffer, R. J., and Taylor, K. E.: Overview of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) experimental design and organization, Geosci. Model Dev., 9, 1937–1958, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-1937-2016, 2016. a
Feng, M., McPhaden, M. J., Xie, S. P., and Hafner, J.: La Niña forces unprecedented Leeuwin Current warming in 2011, Scientific Reports, 3, 1–9, https://doi.org/10.1038/srep01277, 2013. a
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Hermanson, L., Smith, D., Seabrook, M., Bilbao, R., Doblas-Reyes, F., Tourigny, E., Lapin, V., Kharin, V. V., Merryfield, W. J., Sospedra-Alfonso, R., Athanasiadis, P., Nicoli, D., Gualdi, S., Dunstone, N., Eade, R., Scaife, A., Collier, M., O'Kane, T., Kitsios, V., Sandery, P., Pankatz, K., Früh, B., Pohlmann, H., Müller, W., Kataoka, T., Tatebe, H., Ishii, M., Imada, Y., Kruschke, T., Koenigk, T., Karami, M. P., Yang, S., Tian, T., Zhang, L., Delworth, T., Yang, X., Zeng, F., Wang, Y., Counillon, F., Keenlyside, N., Bethke, I., Lean, J., Luterbacher, J., Kolli, R. K., and Kumar, A.: WMO Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update: A Prediction for 2021–25, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 103, E1117–E1129, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-20-0311.1, 2022. a, b
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Mahmood, R., Donat, M. G., Ortega, P., Doblas-Reyes, F. J., Delgado-Torres, C., Samsó, M., and Bretonnière, P.-A.: Constraining low-frequency variability in climate projections to predict climate on decadal to multi-decadal timescales – a poor man's initialized prediction system, Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 1437–1450, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1437-2022, 2022. a, b, c, d, e
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Short summary
Many decisions require consistent climate information from seasonal to multi-year timescales. We assess seamless forecasts created by constraining seasonal and decadal predictions and compare them with initialised multi-annual forecasts. Multi-annual predictions provide the highest skill, but constrained forecasts still perform well and offer a low-cost, regularly updatable solution for delivering coherent climate information.
Many decisions require consistent climate information from seasonal to multi-year timescales. We...
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