Evaluation and Process-Oriented Diagnosis of the GEFSv12 Reforecasts

Three levels of process-oriented model diagnostics are applied to evaluate the Global Ensemble Forecast System version 12 (GEFSv12) reforecasts. The level-1 diagnostics are focused on model systematic errors, which reveals that precipitation onset over tropical oceans occurs too early in terms of column water vapor accumulation. Since precipitation acts to deplete water vapor, this results in prevailing negative biases of precipitable water in the tropics. It is also associated with overtransport of moisture into the mid- and upper troposphere, leading to a dry bias in the lower troposphere and a wet bias in the mid–upper troposphere. The level-2 diagnostics evaluate some major predictability sources on the extended-range time scale: the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) and North American weather regimes. It is found that the GEFSv12 can skillfully forecast the MJO up to 16 days ahead in terms of the Real-time Multivariate MJO indices (bivariate correlation $ 0.6) and can reasonably represent the MJO propagation across the Maritime Continent. The weakened and less coherent MJO signals with increasing forecast lead times may be attributed to humidity biases over the Indo-Pacific warm pool region. It is also found that the weather regimes can be skillfully predicted up to 12 days ahead with persistence comparable to the observation. In the level-3 diagnostics, we examined some high-impact weather systems. The GEFSv12 shows reduced mean biases in tropical cyclone genesis distribution and improved performance in capturing tropical cyclone interannual variability, and midlatitude blocking climatology in the GEFSv12 also shows a better agreement with the observations than in the GEFSv10.