Initialised seasonal forecast of the 20th Century

This dataset contains initialised seasonal hindcast experiments for the 20th century, produced using a version of the ECMWF's Intergrated Forecasting System (IFS), and initialised from ECMWF reanalysis (ERA-20C/CERA-20C). Two types of hindcast experiment are included in this dataset:

CSF-20C (Coupled Seasonal Forecasts): This is a hindcast performed with the model fully coupled to the Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO) ocean model, initialised from CERA-20C reanalysis data.

ASF-20C (Atmospheric Seasonal Forecasts): This is a hindcast performed with prescribed Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and sea-ice boundary conditions at the surface, initialised form ERA-20C reanalysis data.

Hindcasts were started every year between 1901-2009 (inclusive) on the 1st February, 1st May, 1st August and 1st November and are run out for four months from the start date. For each start date, there are either 51 or 25 ensemble members (depending on the season/hindcast).

Monthly mean values for the following variables have been archived here on CEDA (in alphabetical order):

LHF (latent heat-flux)

OLR (outgoing long-wave radiation)

PREC (precipitation)

SHF (sensible heat-flux)

SIC (sea-ice concentration)

SLP (sea-level pressure)

SST (sea surface temperature)

T2 (2m temperature)

U250 (zonal wind at 250 hPa level)

U850 (zonal wind at 850 hPa level)

Us (10m zonal wind speed)

V250 (meridional wind at 250 hPa level)

V850 (meridional wind at 850 hPa level)

Vs (10m meridional wind speed)

Z500 (geopotential at 500 hPa level)

Files for each ensemble member are archived separately and the filetree is in the following format:

[EXPname]/[VARname]monthly_[EXPname]_[INITmonth]START_ENSmems/[VARname]monthly_[YEAR]_M[ENSnum].nc

Where:

[EXPname] =CSF-20C or ASF-20C

[VARname] = Z500, Vs, V850, ... etc.

[INITmonth] = Feb, May, Aug or Nov

[YEAR] =1901, 1902, 1903, ... etc.

[ENSnum] =0, 1, 2, 3, ... etc.

More details of these hindcasts and some previous analysis of these datasets have appeared in the following papers:

Weisheimer, A., Schaller, N., O'Reilly, C., MacLeod, D. A., & Palmer, T. (2017). Atmospheric seasonal forecasts of the twentieth century: multi‐decadal variability in predictive skill of the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and their potential value for extreme event attribution. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 143(703), 917-926.

O'Reilly, C. H., Heatley, J., MacLeod, D., Weisheimer, A., Palmer, T. N., Schaller, N., & Woollings, T. (2017). Variability in seasonal forecast skill of Northern Hemisphere winters over the twentieth century. Geophysical Research Letters, 44(11), 5729-5738.

MacLeod, D., O'Reilly, C., Palmer, T., & Weisheimer, A. (2018). Flow dependent ensemble spread in seasonal forecasts of the boreal winter extratropics. Atmospheric Science Letters, 19(5), e815.

Parker, T., Woollings, T., Weisheimer, A., O'Reilly, C., Baker, L., & Shaffrey, L. (2019). Seasonal predictability of the winter North Atlantic Oscillation from a jet stream perspective. Geophysical Research Letters, 46(16), 10159-10167.

Weisheimer, A., Decremer, D., MacLeod, D., O'Reilly, C., Stockdale, T. N., Johnson, S., & Palmer, T. N. (2019). How confident are predictability estimates of the winter North Atlantic Oscillation?. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 145, 140-159.

Weisheimer, A., Befort, D. J., MacLeod, D., Palmer, T., O’Reilly, C., & Strømmen, K. (2020). Seasonal forecasts of the 20th Century. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, (2020).

Date (Publication): 2020-05-04T13:13:11

Date (Creation): 2020-05-04T13:13:11

Citation identifier: https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/6e1c3df49f644a0f812818080bed5e45

Citation identifier: Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) / 6e1c3df49f644a0f812818080bed5e45

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Unavailable	Weisheimer, Antje	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	O'Reilly, Christopher	Unavailable	Author
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Custodian
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Distributor
Unavailable	O'Reilly, Christopher	Unavailable	Principal investigator
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	pointofContact
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Publisher

Maintenance and update frequency: Not planned

Update scope: Dataset

Keywords

Seasonal
Forecast
model
atmospheric

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

atmospheric conditions

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Public data: access to these data is available to both registered and non-registered users.

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Under the following licence http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/, appropriate use of these data may fall under any use. This message is intended as guidance, always read the full licence. When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.

Spatial representation type: Grid

Language: English

Topic category

Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere

Begin date: 1900-01-01T00:00:00

End date: 2010-12-31T00:00:00

Unique resource identifier: WGS 84

Distribution format

Name	Version
Data are netCDF formatted.

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/6e1c3df49f644a0f812818080bed5e45	CEDA Data Catalogue Page

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://data.ceda.ac.uk/badc/deposited2020/seasonal-forecasts-20thc/data/	DOWNLOAD

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Conformance result

Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication): 2010-12-08

Statement: Data downloaded from the ECMWF MARS archive at the resolution provided here and converted to netcdf (from grin). The data were then delivered to the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis for archiving.

Metadata

File identifier: 6e1c3df49f644a0f812818080bed5e45 XML

Metadata language: English

Character set: UTF8

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Date stamp: 2026-03-01T03:19:32

Metadata standard name: UK GEMINI

Metadata standard version: 2.3

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Point of contact

Overviews

Spatial extent

Provided by

Access to the catalogue

Read here the full details and access to the data.

Simple

Conformance result

Metadata

Overviews

Spatial extent

Keywords

Provided by

Share on social sites