WI set to collaborate with CSIRO to assess International Seasonal Forecasting Systems

The team at Weather Intelligence is looking forward to working closely with the CSIRO Weather and Climate Decisions team to deliver world-class research that is critical to the uptake of seasonal weather forecasting in agriculture. The project titled “Spatially and Temporally Evaluating the Skill of Seasonal Forecasting Systems to Aid with On-farm Decision Making” will kick off this quarter and build on the research already undertaken by Weather intelligence that evaluated the performance of international Seasonal Forecasting Systems.

The motivation for the project is the inherently variable skill within and between models

from one season to the next and in different locations as well as the lack of access to quantitative, contextualised comparisons of seasonal forecast skill for rainfall and temperature for different seasonal forecast systems.

The aim of the project is to not only assess the skill of the many forecasting systems available around the world, but to also develop a standard testing framework that will be useful into the future as models develop and improve. The key decision points for on-farm decisions will be used as indicators rather than overall model skill.