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The Met Office seasonal forecast system (GloSea) submitted both a June outlook, and an August update to the 2015 SIPN outlook. Here we will assess the GloSea performance through last summer's sea ice melt season - our first using the latest coupled configuration of the Met Office Unified Model - Global Coupled configuration 2 (GC2; Williams et al., 2015).
One particular aspect that has been of concern to us has been the performance of the forecast system with respect to the hindcast system, which is used to both estimate the skill of the system, and to provide a means to calibrate the system for bias. The hindcast sea ice analysis, forced by the ERA-I atmospheric analysis has somewhat thicker ice than the forecast sea ice analysis which is forced by the Met Office NWP atmospheric analysis. We will show relationships between these thickness differences in the analysis, and sea ice concentration differences in forecast.
Finally, we should be able to offer you a first glimpse of our 2016 outlook for September sea ice.