Seasonal Predictions of Summer Precipitation in the Middle-lower Reaches of the Yangtze River with Global and Regional Models Based on NUIST-CFS1.0

Accurate prediction of the summer precipitation over the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River (MLYR) is of urgent demand for the local economic and societal development. This study assesses the seasonal forecast skill in predicting summer precipitation over the MLYR region based on the global Climate Forecast System of Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST-CFS1.0, previously SINTEX-F). The results show that the model can provide moderate skill in predicting the interannual variations of the MLYR rainbands, initialized from 1 March. In addition, the nine-member ensemble mean can realistically reproduce the links between the MLYR precipitation and tropical sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies, but the individual members show great discrepancies, indicating large uncertainty in the forecasts. Furthermore, the NUIST-CFS1.0 can predict five of the seven extreme summer precipitation anomalies over the MLYR during 1982–2020, albeit with underestimated magnitudes. The Weather Forecast and Research (WRF) downscaling hindcast experiments with a finer resolution of 30 km, which are forced by the large-scale information of the NUIST-CFS1.0 predictions with a spectral nudging method, display improved predictions of the extreme summer precipitation anomalies to some extent. However, the performance of the downscaling predictions is highly dependent on the global model forecast skill, suggesting that further improvements on both the global and regional climate models are needed.