DYNAMO: Linking Observations and Models to Predict Near-Term Climate
Predicting climate conditions anywhere from two weeks to a season in advance is critical for making informed decisions and safeguarding infrastructure across various sectors of the U.S. economy, including water resources, energy supply, public safety, and agriculture, among many others.
USGCRP agencies are supporting improved climate forecasts on these relatively short timescales through field campaigns coupled with model development and analysis efforts. DOE, NASA, NOAA, NSF, and DOD’s Office of Naval Research funded a campaign known as “DYNAMO” to conduct concentrated observations of the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO), an atmospheric phenomenon that exerts major influence on North American near-term climate, including extreme weather like hurricanes, heavy downpours, and tornadoes.
The detailed observations collected by the DYNAMO campaign are currently being used to analyze and improve climate models, an effort that is already yielding progress in near-term climate prediction. More accurate understanding and modeling of the MJO, made possible by DYNAMO observations, will advance the Nation’s capacity to anticipate and respond to the impacts of near-term climate variability.
The NASA GEOS5 model has made significant progress in simulating the MJO, demonstrated by how closely its output (right panel) visually resembles satellite observation data (left panel; in both panels, MJO events are represented as lines of green, red, and purple sloping from top left to bottom right). Although continued model improvements are necessary, this effort constitutes a substantial leap in near-term climate modeling capability. (Credit: S. Tulich, NOAA)