El Niño prediction for Mar. 2000 - Feb. 2001 has made using the KMA/SNU ENSO prediction system (Kang and Kug, 2000). The system is based on the intermediate ocean and a statistical atmosphere model. The ocean model differs from the Cane and Zebiak (1987) model in the parameterization of subsurface temperature and the basic state. The statistical atmosphere model is developed based on the singular value decomposition (SVD) of wind stress and SST. In addition, the present prediction is attended with random noise to consider weather noise and to generate many sets of prediction. Our approach for random noise is similar to Kirtman and Schopf (1998). The Ensemble prediction is made based on the 10 predictions with the random noise

Figure 1 shows seasonal SST forecast by the KMA/SNU El Niño prediction system in tropical Pacific basin for Mar. 2000 - Feb. 2001. Forecast result indicates that negative SST anomalies will gradually decrease in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific so that the state will be normal over the next summer, fall and winter. Figure 2 shows the NINO3 SSTA forecast with 12 month lead, without noise (thick dashed line) and with random noise (thin solid lines). The thick solid line indicates ensemble mean of 10 forecasts with random noise. Most of the predictions are indicate that La Niña state decays till the end of 2000.

Reference

Cane, M. A., S. E. Zebiak, 1987: Prediction of El Niño events using a physical model, In Atmospheric and Oceanic Variability, H. Cattle, Ed., Royal Meteorological Society Press, 153-182

Kang, I.-S. and J.-S. Kug, 2000: An El-Niño prediction system with an intermediate ocean and statistical atmosphere model, Accepted at Geophys. Res. Lett.

Kirtman, B. P. and P. S. Schopf, 1998: Decal variability in ENSO predictability an prediction, J. Climate, 11, 2804-2822