Dynamic-Model-Based Seasonal Prediction of Meteorological Drought over the Contiguous United States

AbstractA simple method was developed to forecast 3- and 6-month standardized precipitation indices (SPIs) for the prediction of meteorological drought over the contiguous United States based on precipitation seasonal forecasts from the NCEP Climate Forecast System (CFS). Before predicting SPI, the precipitation (P) forecasts from the coarse-resolution CFS global model were bias corrected and downscaled to a regional grid of 50 km. The downscaled CFS P forecasts, out to 9 months, were appended to the P analyses to form an extended P dataset. The SPIs were calculated from this new time series. Five downscaling methods were tested: 1) bilinear interpolation; 2) a bias correction and spatial downscaling (BCSD) method based on the probability distribution functions; 3) a conditional probability estimation approach using the mean P ensemble forecasts developed by J. Schaake, 4) a Bayesian approach that bias corrects and downscales P using all ensemble forecast members, as developed by the Princeton University ...

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