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  • Perspective
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Towards operational predictions of the near-term climate

Abstract

Near-term climate predictions — which operate on annual to decadal timescales — offer benefits for climate adaptation and resilience, and are thus important for society. Although skilful near-term predictions are now possible, particularly when coupled models are initialized from the current climate state (most importantly from the ocean), several scientific challenges remain, including gaps in understanding and modelling the underlying physical mechanisms. This Perspective discusses how these challenges can be overcome, outlining concrete steps towards the provision of operational near-term climate predictions. Progress in this endeavour will bridge the gap between current seasonal forecasts and century-scale climate change projections, allowing a seamless climate service delivery chain to be established.

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Fig. 1: Internal and external elements of a near-term prediction system.
Fig. 2: Near-term (decadal) forecast skill, compared with the skill of operational seasonal forecasts.

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Acknowledgements

The authors form the scientific steering group of the WCRP GC-NTCP. The GC-NTCP is one of the international initiatives promoting and advancing science and standards for the coordinated provision of near-term climate predictions at global scale. T.O.K. was supported by the CSIRO Decadal Forecasting Project (https://research.csiro.au/dfp). S.P. is supported by the National Environmental Science Program’s Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub. D.M. and W.A.M. were supported by the BMBF projects RACE II (D.M., grant no. FKZ:03F0729D) and MiKlip II (W.A.M., grant no. FKZ: 01LP1519A). The work of K.M. was partly supported by the BMBF within the nationally funded project ROMIC–SOLIC (grant no. 01LG1219) as well as within the frame of the WCRP/SPARC SOLARIS-HEPPA activity. A.A.S. and D.S. were supported by the Joint DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate under grant no. GA01101. E.H. was supported by the UK National Centre for Atmospheric Science and the SMURPHS project (grant no. NE/N006054/1). F.D.R. was supported by the H2020 EUCP (grant no. GA 776613) project.

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Y.K. and A.A.S. wrote the paper with input from all other authors. M.T. provided editing, drafting and factual support.

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Correspondence to Yochanan Kushnir or Adam A. Scaife.

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Kushnir, Y., Scaife, A.A., Arritt, R. et al. Towards operational predictions of the near-term climate. Nature Clim Change 9, 94–101 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0359-7

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