Climate information, outlooks, and understanding–where does the IRI stand?

Anthony G Barnston,Michael K Tippett

doi:10.1186/2194-6434-1-20

Anthony G Barnston, Michael K Tippett

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/2194-6434-1-20

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Abstract

The International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) began providing user-oriented climate information, including outlooks, in the late 1990s. Its climate products are intended to meet the needs of decision makers in various sectors of society such as agriculture, water management, health, disaster management, energy, education and others. They try to link the current state of the science in climate diagnostics and prediction to the dynamically evolving practical needs of users worldwide. Because most users are not climate scientists, the manner in which the information is provided is of paramount importance in order for it to be understandable and actionable. Non-technical language that preserves essential content is required, as well as graphics that are intuitive and largely self-explanatory. The climate information products themselves must be in demand by users, rather than ones that the producers believe would be best. These requirements are consistent with IRI’s mission of improving human welfare, particularly in developing countries where decision makers may not initially know what climate information they need, and how best to use it. This lack of initial understanding requires back-and-forth communication between the producers and users to initiate and sustain uptake and beneficial use of the information. Backed by its climate prediction research, the IRI’s climate information products span time-scales of days to decades. Experience on the statistics of daily weather behavior within seasons has been gleaned, as has the benefits of statistical and dynamical spatial downscaling of predictions. By providing views in a progressive sequence of temporal scales, IRI’s products help demonstrate that preparation for interannual climate variability may be the best preparation for decadal variability and trends related to climate change.

Highlights

The International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) began providing current and historical climate information, including seasonal climate outlooks, in the late 1990s
This paper describes several of the main climate products provided to date by IRI, with illustrative examples and explanations of their utility
Beginning in late 2011, the Climate prediction Center (CPC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and IRI began sharing jointly some of the monthly production tasks pertaining to ENSO diagnostic and forecast products, including the ENSO Diagnostic Discussion and a long-lead ENSO probability outlook based on human judgment (Figure 7, lower left panel) and on a set of objective model predictions summarized on the IRI/Climate Prediction Center (CPC) ENSO prediction plume

Summary

Introduction

The format of the issued climate forecasts is probabilistic, in which the probabilities for the precipitation or temperature to be above normal, near normal, and below normal, Figure 1 Example of IRI global rainfall observation maps. As an example of one verification measure, the geographical distribution of the likelihood score, defined as the geometric average of the forecast probability assigned to the correct (later observed) category, is shown in Figure 4 for temperature forecasts issued in mid-December for the January-March season.

Results

Conclusion