Impacts of Snow Initialization on Subseasonal Forecasts of Surface Air Temperature for the Cold Season

Abstract

The present study examines the impacts of snow initialization on surface air temperature by a number of ensemble seasonal predictability experiments using the NCAR CAM3 AGCM with and without snow initialization. The study attempts to isolate snow signals on surface air temperature. In this preliminary study we ignore any effects of variations in sea ice extent and do not explicitly identify possible impacts on atmospheric circulation. The Canadian Meteorological Center (CMC) daily snow depth analysis was used in defining initial snow states, where anomaly rescaling was applied in order to account for the systematic bias of the CAM3 snow depth with respect to the CMC analysis. Two suites of seasonal (3-month long) ensemble hindcasts starting at each month in the colder part of the year (September to April) with and without the snow initialization were performed for 12 recent years (1999-2010) and the predictability skill of surface air temperature were estimated. Results show that considerable potential predictability increases up to 2 months ahead can be attained using snow initialization. Relatively large increases are found over East Asia, western Russia, and Western Canada in the later part of our period. It is suggested that the predictability increases are sensitive to the strength of snow albedo feedback determined by given local climate conditions large gains tend to exist over the regions ofolate snow signals on surface air temperature. In this preliminary study we ignore any effects of variations in sea ice extent and do not explicitly identify possible impacts on atmospheric circulation. The Canadian Meteorological Center (CMC) daily snow depth analysis was used in defining initial snow states, where anomaly rescaling was applied in order to account for the systematic bias of the CAM3 snow depth with respect to the CMC analysis. Two suites of seasonal (3-month long) ensemble hindcasts starting at each month in the colder part of the