CSIRO CAFE-60 submissions to the World Meteorological Organization operational decadal forecasts and the international multi-model data exchange

Abstract

The Climate Analysis Forecast Ensemble (CAFE) system was developed by the Decadal Climate and Forecasting Project (DCFP) within the CSIRO Climate Science Centre (CSC) with the express purposes of providing operational ensemble forecasts of the near-term climate (1–10 years) and meeting the requirements of becoming a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Global Data Producing Centre (GDPC) from which output has been provided in the UK Met Office (UKMO) international, multi-model data exchange. This CAFE-60 submission satisfied, at least, the minimum requirements for the CSC to become a Global Producing Centre for Annual-to-Decadal Climate Prediction (GPC-ADCP) of the WMO Lead Centre for Annual-to-Decadal Climate Prediction. In practical terms, this has meant running the CAFE-60 version 1 modelling system for years 1960–2020, or a 61-year set, with a modest ensemble size of 10. Each decade-long forecast was initialised from the beginning of each November using a state-of-the-art assimilation methodology, and delivering the minimum requested data to the coordinating centre within the UKMO. The number 60 in CAFE-60 refers to the initial year of the assimilation, 1960, where we believe there is adequate observational data to produce a meaningful reanalysis output product for wide scientific application. This document describes the key features of the CAFE-60 assimilation and forecasting system, the climate and forecasting conforming post-processed datasets along with how to access the datasets via the CSIRO Data Access Portal, and the quality control measures implemented to achieve the highest possible data quality and delivery. Part of becoming a Data Producing Centre is the ongoing need to supply CAFE-60 forecast data, at least on an ongoing annual basis, to the UKMO; therefore, obtaining CAFE-60 operational status requires significant ongoing resources and efforts to continue. In addition to the annual dataset submission by the DCFP as a minimum requirement of being declared a Data Contributing Centre, a separate application from the Australian Permanent Representative with WMO (Dr Andrew Johnson) was required to obtain the GPCP status; this was completed in early September 2020, making CSIRO one of only five centres with this special GPC-ADCP status currently in the world.