The Assessment and Calibration of Ensemble Seasonal Forecasts of Equatorial Pacific Ocean Temperature and the Predictability of Uncertainty

Abstract

We evaluate the performance of two 44 year ensemble seasonal hindcast time series for the Nino3 index produced as part of the DEMETER project. We show that the ensemble mean carries useful information out to six months. The ensemble spread, however, only carries useful information out to four months in one of the models, and two months in the other.