Forecast skill of the Indian monsoon and its onset in the ECMWF seasonal forecasting system 5 (SEAS5)

Accurate forecasting of variations in Indian monsoon precipitation and progression on seasonal time scales remains a challenge for prediction centres. We examine prediction skill for the seasonal-mean Indian summer monsoon and its onset in the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) seasonal forecasting system 5 (SEAS5). We analyse summer hindcasts initialised on 1st of May, with 51 ensemble members, for the 36-year period of 1981–2016. We evaluate the hindcasts against the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) precipitation observations and the ECMWF reanalysis 5 (ERA5). The model has significant skill at forecasting dynamical features of the large-scale monsoon and local-scale monsoon onset tercile category one month in advance. SEAS5 shows higher skill for monsoon features calculated using large-scale indices compared to those at smaller scales. Our results also highlight possible model deficiencies in forecasting the all India monsoon rainfall.