Topical Collection on CFSv2

NCEP CLIMATE FORECAST SYSTEM

To accelerate evaluation of and improvements to the operational Climate Forecast System (CFS) and to enhance its use as a skillful tool in providing NCEP’s climate predictions and applications

About CFS

●  Teleconferences

Archives:

●  CFSv2 Evaluation Workshop (2012)

●  Strategy white paper (2012)

●  CFSv3 Planning Meeting (2011)

●  Summary report of the CFSv3 Planning Meeting (2011)

Evolving Projects

CFS Improvement

The NCEP Climate Prediction Center (CPC), NOAA Climate Test Bed (CTB), Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA), and NOAA Climate Program Office (CPO) organized a CFSv2 Evaluation Workshop in 2012. The purpose of the workshop is to bring the broader climate research and applications community together with NCEP scientists to evaluate the utility of CFSv2 for climate modeling research and as a climate forecast tool.  This topical collection includes a selection of peer-reviewed papers consisting of material presented at the workshop.

The twenty-four papers in this collection have documented significant progress in the performance of CFSv2 in simulating ISI climate variability and predicting key climate variables, in comparison to the previous NCEP operational climate forecast system. The papers have also identified key model biases and deficiencies in predicting climate variables (such as precipitation and temperature), simulating the modes of climate variability and phenomena (such as El Niño and the Southern Oscillation or ENSO, the Madden–Julian Oscillation or MJO, the Arctic Oscillation or AO, global and regional

drought, and monsoons) and physical processes and their interactions (such as cloud distributions, land–atmosphere interactions, and ocean–atmosphere interactions). This collection of papers is expected to provide insight into and guidance for the development of the next generation operational CFS.