Stratospheric influence on ECMWF sub‐seasonal forecast skill for energy‐industry‐relevant surface weather in European countries

Büeler, Dominik; Beerli, Remo; Wernli, Heini; Grams, Christian M.

doi:10.1002/qj.3866

Cited by 28 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 109 publications

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“…Skilful forecasts of European winter weather are of great importance for several weather-dependent sectors, such as the health (Charlton-Perez et al, 2021) or renewable energy sector (Van Der Wiel et al, 2019;Büeler et al, 2020) allowing them to prepare and to take early actions. However, predictions on sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) timescales, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of the timing of sudden stratospheric warmings for precipitation and temperature anomalies in Europe

Monnin¹,

Kretschmer²,

Polichtchouk³

2022

Preprint

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The Northern Hemisphere stratospheric polar vortex (SPV), a band of fast westerly winds over the pole extending from approximately 10 to 50 km altitude, is a key driver of European winter weather.Extremely weak polar vortex states, so called sudden stratospheric warmings (SSW), are on average followed by dry and cold weather in Northern Europe, as well as wetter and warmer conditions in Southern Europe. However, the surface response of SSWs varies greatly between events, and it is not well understood which factors modulate this difference. Here we address the role of the timing of SSWs within the cold season (December to March) for the precipitation response in Europe. Due to the limited sample size of SSWs in the observational record, hindcasts of the seasonal forecasting model SEAS5 from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) are analysed. We first evaluate key characteristics of stratosphere-troposphere coupling in SEAS5 against reanalysis data and find them to be reasonably well captured by the model, justifying our approach. We then show that in SEAS5, early winter (December and January) SSWs are followed by more pronounced tropospheric zonal wind and precipitation anomalies compared to late winter (February and March) SSWs. For example, in Scotland the low precipitation anomalies are roughly twice as severe after early winter SSWs than after late winter SSWs. The difference in the response cannot be explained by more downward propagating SSWs in early winter, or by different monthly precipitation climatologies. The role of SSW timing is potentially of use for forecasts and early warnings of European weather on subseasonal to seasonal timescales.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of the timing of sudden stratospheric warmings for precipitation and temperature anomalies in Europe

Monnin¹,

Kretschmer²,

Polichtchouk³

2022

Preprint

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“…[105][106][107][108] and winter storm frequency 109 . Anomalous surface wind speeds, surface temperatures, and precipitation following stratospheric polar vortex anomalies may be used for sub-seasonal to seasonal predictions of energy supply 110,111 and demand 112 , as well as transportation 113 . The state of the QBO has been used to improve prediction of atmospheric rivers, which are linked to extreme rainfall events in western North America 114 , such as the event in December 1979 115 (Fig.…”

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confidence: 99%

Stratospheric drivers of extreme events at the Earth’s surface

Domeisen

Butler

2020

Commun Earth Environ

120

106

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The stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere at heights between 10-50 km, is an important source of variability for the weather and climate at the Earth’s surface on timescales of weeks to decades. Since the stratospheric circulation evolves more slowly than that of the troposphere below, it can contribute to predictability at the surface. Our synthesis of studies on the coupling between the stratosphere and the troposphere reveals that the stratosphere also contributes substantially to a wide range of climate-related extreme events. These extreme events include cold air outbreaks and extreme heat, air pollution, wildfires, wind extremes, and storm clusters, as well as changes in tropical cyclones and sea ice cover, and they can have devastating consequences for human health, infrastructure, and ecosystems. A better understanding of the vertical coupling in the atmosphere, along with improved representation in numerical models, is therefore expected to help predict extreme events on timescales from weeks to decades in terms of the event type, magnitude, frequency, location, and timing. With a better understanding of stratosphere-troposphere coupling, it may be possible to link more tropospheric extremes to stratospheric forcing, which will be crucial for emergency planning and management.

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“…1c), although the maximum level of skill is lower (as seen in Soret et al, 2019, for European wind speeds). This suggests either lower skill in forecasting wind speeds than temperatures as seen in (Büeler et al, 2020) or subtleties in the method of creating the energy variables. (For example, the demand model averages temperatures over the whole country prior to conversion to demand, therefore allowing for some aggregation of skill.…”

Section: Variations In Skill In Forecasting Throughout the Yearmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For forecasts of demand from the ECMWF model (Fig. 2a) a steep decline in skill is seen between week 1 and week 2 (days 12-19), with a maximum ACC of 0.5 seen for Romania (a region where Büeler et al (2020) find high skill in forecasting 2 m temperature). Positive values of ACC are still seen out to week 4 for Romania; however most countries only show significant positive ACC in week 3.…”

Section: Deterministic Skill Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sub-seasonal forecasts of demand and wind power and solar power generation for 28 European countries

Bloomfield

Brayshaw

Gonzalez

et al. 2021

Earth Syst. Sci. Data

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Abstract. Electricity systems are becoming increasingly exposed to weather. The need for high-quality meteorological forecasts for managing risk across all timescales has therefore never been greater. This paper seeks to extend the uptake of meteorological data in the power systems modelling community to include probabilistic meteorological forecasts at sub-seasonal lead times. Such forecasts are growing in skill and are receiving considerable attention in power system risk management and energy trading. Despite this interest, these forecasts are rarely evaluated in power system terms, and technical barriers frequently prohibit use by non-meteorological specialists. This paper therefore presents data produced through a new EU climate services programme Subseasonal-to-seasonal forecasting for Energy (S2S4E). The data correspond to a suite of well-documented, easy-to-use, self-consistent daily and nationally aggregated time series for wind power, solar power and electricity demand across 28 European countries. The data are accessible from https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.275 (Gonzalez et al., 2020). The data include a set of daily ensemble reforecasts from two leading forecast systems spanning 20 years (ECMWF, an 11-member ensemble, with twice-weekly starts for 1996–2016, totalling 22 880 forecasts) and 11 years (NCEP, a 12-member lagged-ensemble, constructed to match the start dates from the ECMWF forecast from 1999–2010, totalling 14 976 forecasts). The reforecasts contain multiple plausible realisations of daily weather and power data for up to 6 weeks in the future. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time a fully calibrated and post-processed daily power system forecast set has been published, and this is the primary purpose of this paper. A brief review of forecast skill in each of the individual primary power system properties and a composite property is presented, focusing on the winter season. The forecast systems contain additional skill over climatological expectation for weekly-average forecasts at extended lead times, though this skill depends on the nature of the forecast metric considered. This highlights the need for greater collaboration between the energy and meteorological research communities to develop applications, and it is hoped that publishing these data and tools will support this.

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Stratospheric influence on ECMWF sub‐seasonal forecast skill for energy‐industry‐relevant surface weather in European countries

Cited by 28 publications

References 109 publications

The role of the timing of sudden stratospheric warmings for precipitation and temperature anomalies in Europe

The role of the timing of sudden stratospheric warmings for precipitation and temperature anomalies in Europe

Stratospheric drivers of extreme events at the Earth’s surface

Sub-seasonal forecasts of demand and wind power and solar power generation for 28 European countries

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