The Relationship between Deterministic and Ensemble Mean Forecast Errors Revealed by Global and Local Attractor Radii

It has been demonstrated that ensemble mean forecasts, in the context of the sample mean, have higher forecasting skill than deterministic (or single) forecasts. However, few studies have focused on quantifying the relationship between their forecast errors, especially in individual prediction cases. Clarification of the characteristics of deterministic and ensemble mean forecasts from the perspective of attractors of dynamical systems has also rarely been involved. In this paper, two attractor statistics—namely, the global and local attractor radii (GAR and LAR, respectively)—are applied to reveal the relationship between deterministic and ensemble mean forecast errors. The practical forecast experiments are implemented in a perfect model scenario with the Lorenz96 model as the numerical results for verification. The sample mean errors of deterministic and ensemble mean forecasts can be expressed by GAR and LAR, respectively, and their ratio is found to approach \(\sqrt 2 \) with lead time. Meanwhile, the LAR can provide the expected ratio of the ensemble mean and deterministic forecast errors in individual cases.