Title: 40th Anniversary of the First Dynamical El Niño Forecast; Operational Climate Prediction; the Outsized El Niño of 2026
Abstract:
Forty-one years ago at Lamont, Mark Cane and Steve Zebiak began to hindcast and forecast El Niño with a dynamical model of the coupled tropical Pacific. Forty years ago, early in 1986, they published in Nature an El Niño forecast to be verified by the end of that year. Mark Cane will open by recounting the understanding of ENSO and the modeling that made this forecast possible, and the reasons it should not have succeeded.
That success, showing that seasonal climate is predictable, led to the founding of the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction (IRI) at Lamont thirty years ago. Andy Robertson will describe how IRI turned ENSO predictability into practice, with a multimodel ENSO forecast “plume,” which became a widely used global reference, and probabilistic multimodel forecasts of seasonal precipitation and temperature that formed the bedrock for climate services for decision-makers around the world.
You no doubt know that an exceptional (“super,” “Godzilla,” …) El Niño is underway. Azhar Ehsan will close by presenting the latest CCSR/IRI forecasts and an up-to-date analysis of this event.
