US
National Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME)
The US National Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) is an experimental multi-model seasonal
forecasting system consisting of coupled models from US modeling centers
including NOAA/NCEP, NOAA/GFDL, IRI, NCAR, NASA, and Canada's CMC.
The need for the development of NMME operational predictive capability was
recommended in the recent US
National Academies report "Assessment of Intraseasonal
to Interannual Climate Prediction and Predictability". Indeed, the national effort is required
to meet the specific tailored regional prediction and decision support needs of
a large community of climate information users. The multi-model ensemble
approach has proven extremely effective at quantifying prediction uncertainty
due to uncertainty in model formulation, and has proven to produce better prediction
quality (on average) than any single model ensemble. This multi-model approach
is the basis for several international collaborative prediction research
efforts, including an operational European system. There are numerous examples
of how this multi-model ensemble approach yields superior forecasts compared to
any single model.
Based on two NOAA Climate Test Bed (CTB)
NMME workshops (February
18, 2011 and April
8, 2011) a collaborative and coordinated implementation strategy for an
NMME prediction system has been developed and is currently delivering real-time seasonal-to-interannual predictions on the NOAA Climate Prediction
Center (CPC) operational schedule. The hindcast and
real-time prediction data is readily available and in graphical format from
CPC. Moreover, the NMME forecast are already currently being used as guidance
for operational forecasters.
The Phase-I NMME
project in 2011 was funded as a CTB Project by NOAA Climate Program Office
Modeling, Analysis, Predictions and Projections (MAPP) Program.
The Phase-II NMME project was funded as
a 2-year (2012-2013) inter-agency project by NOAA, NSF, DOE and NASA.