Verification of the 2019 GloSea5 Seasonal Tropical Cyclone Landfall Forecast for East China
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Special Collection on Climate Science for Service Partnership (CSSP) China
OCTOBER 2020
Verification of the 2019 GloSea5 Seasonal Tropical Cyclone Landfall Forecast for East China Joanne CAMP1, Philip E. BETT1*, Nicola GOLDING1, Chris D. HEWITT1,2, Timothy D. MITCHELL1, and Adam A. SCAIFE1,3 1 Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK 2 University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba QLD 4350, Australia 3 College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, Devon EX4 4QF, UK (Received March 10, 2020; in final form May 15, 2020)
ABSTRACT A prototype climate service was developed and trialled in early 2019 to provide seasonal forecast of the June–July– August (JJA) tropical cyclone (TC) landfall risk for the East China region ahead of the forthcoming typhoon season. Test forecasts were produced in both March and April 2019 and a final forecast was released to the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) on 1 May 2019. The trial service was produced by using the Met Office Global Seasonal forecast system (GloSea5), and a forecast of the western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH) index was used to infer the TC landfall risk based on a simple linear regression between historical model WPSH indices and observed TC landfalls in East China. The forecast method shows significant skill for forecasting the JJA TC landfall risk in East China with up to three-month lead time, with the greatest skill for predictions initialized in May. The 2019 forecast provided good guidance of the near-average TC activity observed in East China in JJA 2019. Success of the forecast adds confidence to an improved climate service ahead of the 2020 typhoon season. Key words: seasonal forecasting, typhoons, tropical cyclones (TCs), landfall risk, East China, western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH) Citation: Camp, J., P. E. Bett, N. Golding, et al., 2020: Verification of the 2019 GloSea5 seasonal tropical cyclone landfall forecast for East China. J. Meteor. Res., 34(5), 917–925, doi: 10.1007/s13351-020-0043-5.
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Introduction
Tropical cyclones (TCs) can cause significant damage when they make landfall. China experiences the greatest annual average number of landfalling TCs in the world (Wen et al., 2018). In China, over 50% of societal and 18% of economic losses result from landfalling typhoons (Xiao and Xiao, 2010; Wang et al., 2016). The greatest losses occur along the coasts around the Yangtze River and Pearl River deltas, particularly in Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces (Wang et al., 2016, 2019). In 2019, East China was greatly impacted by Typhoon Lekima, which passed to the west of Shanghai. Lekima became the fifth most intense landfalling typhoon in the Chinese mainland since 1949 and lasted for 44 h on land—the sixth longest of all TCs in China on
record—causing the daily average precipitation rates of 100 mm across 3.61 million km2 (CMA, 2019) and 364,000 hectares of crops to be damaged (Reuters, 2019). Over one million people were evacuated, including those in Shanghai, and the total economic losses were est
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