• Atmosphere
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.117-128
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• 2012

Does snow depth initialization have a quantitative impact on sub-seasonal to seasonal prediction skill? To answer this question, a snow depth initialization technique for seasonal forecast system has been implemented and the impact of the initialization on the seasonal forecast of surface air temperature during the wintertime is examined. Since the snow depth observation can not be directly used in the model simulation due to the large systematic bias and much smaller model variability, an anomaly rescaling method to the snow depth initialization is applied. Snow depth in the model is initialized by adding a rescaled snow depth observation anomaly to the model snow depth climatology. A suite of seasonal forecast is performed for each year in recent 12 years (1999-2010) with and without the snow depth initialization to evaluate the performance of the developed technique. The results show that the seasonal forecast of surface air temperature over East Asian region sensitively depends on the initial snow depth anomaly over the region. However, the sensitivity shows large differences for different timing of the initialization and forecast lead time. Especially, the snow depth anomaly initialized in the late winter (Mar. 1) is the most effective in modulating the surface air temperature anomaly after one month. The real predictability gained by the snow depth initialization is also examined from the comparison with observation. The gain of the real predictability is generally small except for the forecasting experiment in the early winter (Nov. 1), which shows some skillful forecasts. Implications of these results and future directions for further development are discussed.

• Atmosphere
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.155-167
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• 2015

A dynamical seasonal prediction system for boreal winter utilizing cryospheric information was developed. Using the Community Atmospheric Model, version3, (CAM3) as a modeling system, newly developed snow depth initialization method and sea ice concentration treatment were implemented to the seasonal prediction system. Daily snow depth analysis field was scaled in order to prevent climate drift problem before initializing model's snow fields and distributed to the model snow-depth layers. To maximize predictability gain from land surface, we applied one-month-long training procedure to the prediction system, which adjusts soil moisture and soil temperature to the imposed snow depth. The sea ice concentration over the Arctic region for prediction period was prescribed with an anomaly-persistent method that considers seasonality of sea ice. Ensemble hindcast experiments starting at 1st of November for the period 1999~2000 were performed and the predictability gain from the imposed cryospheric informations were tested. Large potential predictability gain from the snow information was obtained over large part of high-latitude and of mid-latitude land as a result of strengthened land-atmosphere interaction in the modeling system. Large-scale atmospheric circulation responses associated with the sea ice concentration anomalies were main contributor to the predictability gain.

• Atmosphere
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.73-83
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• 2013

In recent several years, East Asia, Europe and North America have suffered successive cold winters and a number of historical records on the extreme weathers are replaced with new record-breaking cold events. As a possible explanation, several studies suggested that cryospheric conditions of Northern Hemisphere (NH), i.e. Arctic sea-ice and snow cover over northern part of major continents, are changing significantly and now play an active role for modulating midlatitude atmospheric circulation patterns that could bring cold winters for some regions in midlatitude. In this study, a dynamical seasonal prediction system for NH winter is newly developed using the snow depth initialization technique and statistically predicted sea-ice boundary condition. Since the snow depth shows largest variability in October, entire period of October has been utilized as a training period for the land surface initialization and model land surface during the period is continuously forced by the observed daily atmospheric conditions and snow depths. A simple persistent anomaly decaying toward an averaged sea-ice condition has been used for the statistical prediction of sea-ice boundary conditions. The constructed dynamical prediction system has been tested for winter 2012/13 starting at November 1 using 16 different initial conditions and the results are discussed. Implications and a future direction for further development are also described.