Monthly Extended Predicting Experiments with Nonlinear Regional Prediction. Part I: Prediction of Zonal Mean Flow

Systematic errors have recently been founded to be distinct in the zonal mean component forecasts,which account for a large portion of the total monthly-mean forecast errors. To overcome the difficulty of numerical model, the monthly pentad-mean nonlinear dynamic regional prediction models of the zonal mean geopotential height at 200, 300, 500, and 700 hPa based on a large number of historical data (NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data) were constituted by employing the local approximation of the phase space reconstruction theory and nonlinear spatio-temporal series prediction method. The 12-month forecast experiments of 1996 indicated that the results of the nonlinear model are better than those of the persistent, climatic prediction,and T42L9 model either over the high- and mid-latitude areas of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres or the tropical area. The root-mean-square of the monthly-mean height of T42L9 model was considerably decreased with a change of 30.4%, 26.6%, 82.6%, and 39.4%, respectively, over the high- and mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, over the high- and mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere, over the tropics and over the globe, and also the corresponding anomaly correlation coe cients over the four areas were respectively increased by 0.306-0.312, 0.304-0.429, 0.739-0.746, and 0.360-0.400 (averagely a relative change of 11.0% over the globe) by nonlinear correction after integration, implying that the forecasts given by nonlinear model include more useful information than those of T42L9 model.