EXPERIMENTS AIMING AT MONTHLY AND SEASONAL NUMERICAL WEATHER PREDICTION1

Abstract

The author's thermal model for monthly and seasonal numerical prediction of temperatures is generalized, so that besides radiation other forms of heating (or the anomalies of heating) are generated within the model. This is done by expressing such heating as a linear function of variables predicted in the model. The anomalies directly incorporated are those in the storages of thermal energy which are introduced by prescribing in the previous interval the temperature of the surface water in the oceans and the temperature of the midtroposphere, as well as the anomalies in the short-wave radiation absorbed by the surface; which in turn are introduced by prescribing the albedo (snow cover) at the end of the previous interval. The numerical experiments show that important anomalies of the evaporation at the surface, of the vertical turbulent transport of sensible heat from the surface, of the condensation of water vapor in the clouds, and of the cloudiness are introduced by the anomalies of the computed temperature fields. Furthermore, these induced anomalies of the heating functions and of the cloudiness in turn introduce changes in the anomalies of the temperature fields.