Do Climate Forecast System (CFSv2) forecasts improve seasonal soil moisture prediction?

Abstract

We investigated whether seasonal soil moisture forecasts derived from a land surface model forced by seasonal climate forecast model outputs are more skillful than benchmark forecasts derived from the same land surface model but with forcings taken from resampled climatological precipitation, temperature and low level winds. For most forecast leads and over the western United States, soil moisture forecasts based on seasonal climate forecasts are no more skillful than the benchmark. For relatively short (one month) leads, the climate model-based forecasts are more skillful than the benchmark along a swath from the Gulf States to the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys and the Southwest monsoon region, where the climate model has skillful precipitation forecasts. © 2012. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.