Current El Niño Research

One part of our current research into the El Niño phenomenon is aimed at increasing the forecast skill of our Hybrid Coupled Model (HCM) of the tropical Pacific. We already use it, generally quite successfully, to make operational predictions of the tropical Pacific. But there are times when it could do a better job, and that is what we are looking into.

We currently are exploring a couple ideas for how to increase the model skill, especially at extended lead times:

• We are looking at the geographical area of applicability of the model, which is to say, what part of the Pacific it covers, and exactly how to model the land masses.
  
  
• We are looking at non-linear proxys of SST, which is just a way of saying that we are looking at computing the winds from tropical storms rather than from tropical sea surface temperatures.
  
  
• We are evaluating the effect of adding a final "prediction corrector" scheme to the model output. This compares the model's past history of predictions to what actually happened, and corrects the predictions based on ways in which the model typically makes mistakes.
  
• We are examining the effect of downscaling the output of global weather prediction models to give better results in limited areas, for example, California and Nevada in the U.S.

Another part of our research focusses on predicting unusual temperature or precipitation patterns across the U.S that are associated with El Niño. Obviously, these are something that the residents of the U.S. are quite interested in.

Last modified: 24 July 1997
Contact: dpierce@ucsd.edu
Copyright © 2000 David W. Pierce. All rights reserved.