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Tim DelSole

2012-09-20
10:35:00 - 11:25:00

101 , Mathematics Research Center Building (ori. New Math. Bldg.)

This talk presents an overview of our current understanding and accomplishments in predicting the climate on multi-year time scales. There is clear evidence from coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models that the climate system can be predicted on multi-year time scales based on changes in greenhouse gas concentration, aerosol concentration, and solar insolation, and based on initial condition information primarily from the ocean subsurface. New statistical optimization techniques have substantially clarified the space-time structure of both forms of predictability on multi-year time scales. These techniques reveal not only predictability of ocean quantities, but also predictability of temperature and precipitation over land on multi-year time scales. To validate these results from climate model studies, we present a new prediction system which, for the first time, is verified to have skill on multi-year time scales over the entire twentieth century observational record.

For material related to this talk, click here.