Skillful Seasonal Forecasts of Land Carbon Uptake in Northern Mid‐ and High Latitudes

Abstract

AbstractHere we present a first look at the Gross Primary Production (GPP) forecast skill levels achievable with a state‐of‐the‐art subseasonal‐to‐seasonal (S2S) forecast system. Using NASA's retrospective S2S ensemble forecast in conjunction with a terrestrial biosphere model, and using an independent, remote sensing‐based data set for validation, we demonstrate an ability to accurately forecast spring‐summer carbon uptake at multi‐month leads. Averaged across mid‐ and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere land, the GPP forecast initialized on January 1 produces statistically significant skill through summer. The skill achieved, however, is spatially variable, with some regions appearing to extract skill from accurate forecasts of snowpack removal and others extracting skill from the initialization of carbon and nitrogen states. Our results reveal some heretofore unexplored facets of climate predictability and provide a look at what might be possible with future S2S forecast systems that are fully integrated with biogeochemical cycles.