Seasonal Climate Outlook released today using a new model

22/05/2013

The Bureau of Meteorology’s latest Seasonal Climate Outlook has been released today, using an updated model that builds on the accuracy of its three-month outlooks for temperature and rainfall across Australia.

Updated each month, Seasonal Climate Outlooks provide a key service to many Australian sectors that need to look at the season ahead for their planning, such as the resources, agriculture and rural sectors, as well as emergency managers.

Bureau of Meteorology Manager of Climate Prediction Services, Dr Andrew Watkins, said the Seasonal Climate Outlook is now based on a dynamical climate model, which combines the physics of the atmosphere, oceans, land and ice to calculate the likely climate conditions across Australia over the next three months.

“Previously the Seasonal Climate Outlook used a statistical climate model, which uses past history as a guide to the future climate outlook. The new dynamical climate model is not limited to assumptions of how climate behaved in the past, and can better handle extremes,” said Dr Watkins.

“Testing carried out has already shown some improvements in the accuracy of the new dynamical model over the traditional statistical model.

“The transition to dynamical modelling is part of the Bureau’s process of continuous, incremental improvement in all of its weather and climate modelling systems.

“The increase in accuracy of the new model over the previous statistical model is relatively modest, but lays the foundation for further increases in forecast accuracy over the coming decades as the science, computing capacity, and remote sensing technologies improve even further.

“By using dynamical models, options for producing a more extensive range of climate outlooks for indicators such as sea surface temperature, wind or sunshine-hours will be possible in the future,”
he said.

Known as the Predictive Ocean Atmosphere Model for Australia (POAMA) in scientific circles, the new dynamical model has been refined over more than ten years of research and development by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO.

Seasonal Climate Outlooks indicate the probability of temperature and rainfall exceeding the long term median during the next three-month period, and are driven by large-scale shifts in the climate such as El Niño or La Niña events. By contrast, weather forecasts are currently produced with a high degree of accuracy out to seven days, and are used in short-term planning.

For the latest rainfall outlooks go to National seasonal rainfalls.

For the latest temperature outlooks go to National seasonal temperatures.