Climate Prediction Program for the Americas (CPPA)

1. Climate Prediction Program for the Americas(CPPA) • Outline: • CPPA program • General overview • Activities relevant to HE • Outstanding HE issues for North America • CPPA future priorities Jin Huang and Annarita MariottiNOAA Climate Program OfficeApril 16, 2008Padua, Italy

2. NOAA Climate GoalUnderstand Climate Variability and Change to Enhance Society’s Ability to Plan and Respond • OUTCOMES • A predictive understanding of the global climate system on time scales of weeks to decades with quantified uncertainties sufficient for making informed and reasoned decisions • Climate-sensitive sectors and the climate-literate public effectively incorporating NOAA’s climate products into their plans and decisions • PROGRAMS • Observations and Monitoring • Climate Research and Modeling • Climate Services Development CPPA PROGRAMS

3. Climate Prediction Program for the Americas Mission: Improve operational intra-seasonal to interannual hydroclimatic predictions for the Americas CPPA Science Objectives: • Improve the understanding and model simulation of ocean, atmosphere and land-surface processes • Quantify the predictability of climate variations on intra-seasonal to interannual time scale • Advance NOAA’s operational climate forecasts, monitoring, and analysis systems • Develop climate-based hydrologic forecasting capabilities for decision support and water resource applications. Research Components Atmosphere-Ocean Interactions Land-Atmosphere Interactions Climate Predictability & Prediction Operational Climate Prediction,Monitoringand Analysis Climate-Based Hydrologic Forecasting and Water Resources Applications GAPP PACS

5. CPPA Interests in Mountain Hydroclimate Studies • Climate Predictability at intraseasonal to interannual time scales • seasonal predictability in mountain regions (local and remote forcing) • Land-Atmosphere Interactions • cold-season processes in western mountains • representation of subgrid variability of hydrologic variables in climate models • Operational Climate Prediction, Monitoring, and Analysis • improved prediction skill in mountainous areas • orographic precipitation • drought monitoring and prediction in mountain regions; • downscaling climate forecasts from large scale to sub-basin in mountain regions • Hydrologic Forecasting for Water Resource Applications • hydrologic prediction in mountain regions

6. The North American Monsoon Experiment (NAME) • Study of warm season hydroclimate and convective processes over complex terrain (Tier I): • NAME Event Rain gauge Network (NERN) 87 rain gauges and 14 T/RH sensors along 6 major W-E transects traversing SMO • Analyses of complex interactions over western Mexico between land-sea, mountain-plan circulations and low-level jets. NAME Accomplishments: • NAME 2004 Field Program and Datasets Archive • Diagnostic and Modeling Studies

7. CPPA Drought Predictability Studies Tropical influences on drought North America • New FY08 Projects: • Roles of SST modes • • Role of remote convection • • Influences of multi-ocean • basins • • Roles of vegetation and sub- • surface water and drought • impact on phenology; • • Diagnosis of water budget and • moisture sources during • drought • • Hydrological predictability in • the West under drought • conditions OBS GLOBAL T.E. Pacific January-May precipitation anomalies over the U. S. for 1998-2002 (Huang and Seager) Future droughts in the southwest P-E trends for the southwest U.S. from IPCC AR4 simulations (Seager)

8. VOCALS Program (VAMOS Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land-Studies) “To better understand physical and chemical processes central to the climate system of the Southeast Pacific region, involving poorly understood interactions between the ocean, the atmosphere, and the land.” OBJECTIVE: • Improve numerical model simulations of the coupled climate system in the SEP SCIENCE QUESTIONS: • Why is SE Tropical Pacific so cold & cloudy? • What are roles of: • Topography (Andes Cordillera)? • Ocean eddies & upwelling? • Natural and anthro. aerosol? VOCALS-REx field campaign Oct-Nov ‘08

9. WCRB WCRB Yukon Territory, Canada MCRB MCRB RCEW LSOS Alberta, Canada RCEW Idaho, USA LSOS Colorado, USA North American Cordilleran Transect Integrated Measurement and modelling study (PIs: Marks, Pomeroy, Link, Hardy) • Measurement of surface fluxes and hydro-meteo conditions during snowmelt • Model development: • Vegetation-snowcover interactions • Scaling in complex terrain Measured H, LvE & SublimationExposed & Sheltered Sites (2004-2006)

10. Modelling of snow processes and snow data assimilation A snow evolution modeling system (SnowModel) and A Simple Data Assimilation System For Complex Snow Distributions (SnowAssim) SnowAssim Data Assimilation Sub-Model • SnowModel simulations using SnowAssim have improved snow-water-equivalent (SWE) distributions. • More realistic spatial heterogeneity than that provided by the observations alone. (Liston, and Hiemstra, 2007) Time evolution of SWE at a sample site, for initial and assimilation runs. Shown is the assimilation model’s ability to pass through the observations when and where they exist.

11. The North American Regional Re-analyses (NARR) A long-term, consistent, high-resolution climate dataset for the North American domain,as a major improvement upon the earlier global reanalysis datasets in both resolution and accuracy Evaluation of the North American Regional Reanalyses over Complex Terrain General Characteristics: • Based on NCEP’s ETA/EDAS/Noah • 3D Var assimilation system • Assimilation of observed precipitation • 32 km/45 lvls, 3hr resolution • 1979 to 2002..

12. CPPA Drought Monitor and Seasonal Prediction NLDAS-based Drought Monitor is based on realtime and retrospective National Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) with multiple land models. Compared to the existing operational US Drought Monitor, NLDAS-based Monitor System is 1) objective 2) quantifiable 3) reproducible NLDAS-Based Drought Monitor New Drought Prediction Initial land conditions Multiple Land/Hydrologic Models Downscaling & bias correction Climate Forecasts (GCMs and Official)

13. Development of an experimental seasonal hydrologic prediction system for the continental U.S. Nowcasts of Snow Water Equivalent for western U.S. and soil moisture for eastern U.S. from University of Washington Westwide Hydrologic Forecast System and Princeton Forecast System, respectively. White circles in western U.S. and red circles in eastern U.S. are streamflow forecast points, at which seasonal streamflow forecasts are issued twice-monthly (UW) and monthly (Princeton). Insert shows seasonal streamflow forecasts as of March 1 for Columbia River at the Dalles, OR from UW system. (D. Lettenmaier and E. Wood)

14. Outstanding mountain hydroclimate issues and CPPA’s near-term priorities

15. North American Mountain Hydroclimate Workshop - Oct 07 Recommandations: 1) Improvement in hydrologic forecast in mountainous regions. Includes improvement in precipitation forecast. 2) Development of a regional integrated modeling system (atmosphere, hydrology, ecosystem, etc,) as a tool to diagnose and predict the mountains water balance. 3) Need for more data in the mountainous regions. Recommendations include field projects for critical measurements along mountain transects, and data assimilation products for the mountains (e.g., NARR does not adequately resolve mountain processes). 4) There is a need to quantify the limits of predictability in mountainous regions (e.g., the relative importance of large-scale vs regional-scale forcing, etc).

16. 180 km 80km 32 km Cascades Moist Dry Sierra Impact of Downscaling on simulation and prediction • Typical GCM resolution does not allow to resolve effects of individual mountains • E.g. Impact of downscaling in simulating ENSO precipitation anomalies. After Lawford Observation RCM Simulation NCEP Reanalyses Composite El Nino Precipitation Anomaly. After Leung et al.

17. A New CPPA Project:Multi-RCM Ensemble Downscaling of multi-GCM Seasonal Forecasts Objective: Demonstrate the usefulness of multi-RCM downscaling of global seasonal forecasts for hydrologic applications. • Linkage to NOAA’s operations: • To examine the role of downscaling in improving GCM (CFS first) prediction skill • To provide predictions at higher resolution and regional level for hydrologic applications • contributing to better climate services • comparison of dynamic downscaling and statistical downscaling

18. CPPA near-term Priorities concerning mountain hydroclimate Impact of large scale climate variability on mountain hydroclimate Sources of climate predictability in mountainous areas Cold-season process studies and modeling improvements Hydrologic prediction in mountainous areas.

19. HE-climate interactions over North America • Orography provides a scale transfer mechanism that focuses large scale features into regional scale responses • Predicting climate variability/change in the mountains requires prediction of large scale variations/change and their interactions with the mountains • Large scale variations that influence the mountain regions of North America include: - ENSO (seasonal to interannual) - Tropical modes (intraseasonal) - Upper level flow (weekly and beyond) • Climate change: • Drought in the southwest