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Throwing Darts

02 Feb 2017 05:34 AM
The National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) runs a seasonal forecast model known as the Climate Forecast System (CFS). The IEM has been archiving the morning run made each day that goes out nine months into the future. The featured chart presents each model run's forecast for average February temperature for Ames. Within the meteorological community, the CFS model has been criticized for having poor run to run consistency and the featured chart illustrates that pretty clearly. The scatter plot shows forecasts all over the board with wild fluctuations between successive model runs. One would hope to more obvious trends with successive runs providing incremental changes as the model trends warmer or cooler. So what will our February look like? Perhaps throwing a dart would be as effective :)

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Tags:   cfs   model