Improving Predictions of Tibetan Plateau Summer Precipitation Using a Sea Surface Temperature Analog-Based Correction Method

Abstract

Boreal summer precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) is difficult to predict in current climate models and has become a challenging issue. To address this issue, a new analog-based correction method has been developed. Our analysis reveals a substantial correlation between the prediction errors of TP summer precipitation (TPSP) and previous February anomalies of sea surface temperature (SST) in the key regions of tropical oceans. Consequently, these SST anomalies can be selected as effective predictors for correcting prediction errors. With remote-sensing-based and observational datasets employed as benchmarks, the new method was validated using the rolling-independent validation method for the period 1992–2018. The results clearly demonstrate that the new SST analog-based correction method of dynamical models can evidently improve prediction skills of summer precipitation in most TP regions. In comparison to the original model predictions, the method exhibits higher skills in terms of temporal and spatial skill scores. This study offers a valuable tool for effectively improving the TPSP prediction in dynamical models.

Keywords

• Tibetan Plateau
• summer precipitation prediction
• analog-based correction
• prediction errors
• multi-model ensemble