Neural Network Model Forecasts of the NINO3.4 Sea Surface Temperature

contributed by Benyang Tang¹, William W. Hsieh¹ and Fredolin T. Tangang²

¹Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada

²Department of Marine Science, Faculty of Science & Natural Resources, National University of Malaysia,

The model we used to produce these forecasts is the same as that appearing in the September 1998 Issue of this bulletin. The reader is referred to that issue for details of our model.

Figure 1 shows the forecasts at lead times of 3, 6, 9, and 12-months, using data up to November 2000. Forecasts at 9- and 12-month lead times indicate that the tropical Pacific will remain to be slightly cold or normal until the end of 2001.

Figure captions

Figure 1. Forecasts of the neural networks at 3, 6, 9, and 12-month lead times. The solid curve shows the observed values and the circles, the predicted values.