In a warming climate, just how predictable are temperature extremes at weather and seasonal time scales?

Abstract

Whilst climate change projections are suggesting an increase in temperature extremes over southern Africa, these extremes are not expected to happen every day or even every summer. Operational weather and seasonal forecasts can indicate whether or not the next week or the next months are to be associated with such temperature extremes. Weather forecasts for the next day may be predicted correctly 9 out of 10 consecutive days, but for seasonal time scales, even during the mid-summer season of highest predictability, forecast are typically correct only 3 or 4 out of 5 summer seasons. The presentation will present the current operational forecasting approaches employed by the South African Weather Service and by the CSIR to predict temperature extremes on operational forecast time scales, and show how skilful these forecasts are under certain conditions.