Focus Area: Subseasonal-to-Seasonal Predictability
Based on input from staff, UCAR members, and the broader scientific community, ESPAT’s first focus area is subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) predictability, defined here as two weeks to three months.
Additional research areas will be added in S2S and other subject areas as the initiative develops.
Calling land-atmosphere interaction researchers!
You are invited to join NSF NCAR’s new S2S & land-atmosphere interactions working group. This hands-on team launched in October 2024 to advance the understanding of land-atmosphere coupling processes utilizing various S2S models and observations, particularly in the Community Earth System Model (CESM) and Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS). In May of 2025, the group expanded to include additional external collaborators and encompass a variety of topical sub-groups.
For information on expectations of working group members, see the Working Group Terms of Reference.
The S2S + Land-Atmosphere Interactions Working Group meets online quarterly to discuss research highlights and stay up to date with ongoing efforts. Within the larger group, several focused sub-groups have formed that meet monthly or every other month, depending on the topic. The current sub-groups include:
- Metrics
- Process-oriented goal: Identify a concise set of metrics focused on land-atmosphere interactions and their impact on S2S predictability.
- Application-oriented goal: Identify evaluation metrics for S2S applications related to agriculture, water resources, drought, wildfire, urban-heat, health, etc.
- Agriculture: Assess predictability in agricultural regions, focusing on land surface processes and the use of S2S reforecasts for decision making.
- Extremes: Investigate the predictability of extremes with a focus on the role of land initialization and land-atmosphere interactions
- Regionally Refined Simulations: Develop and execute a series of regionally-refined simulations in MPAS-A and CESM to understand the sensitivity to horizontal grid spacing and model physics
- Diurnal Cycle of Precipitation: Investigate the drivers of biases in the diurnal cycle of precipitation over land and its sensitivity to land-atmosphere interactions, realistic land initialization of reforecasts, horizontal grid spacing, etc.
- Coordinated Experiments: Design experiments that can be carried out with multiple models to quantify the role of land-atmosphere interactions
These groups bring together folks from NCAR and the broader community—including universities, NOAA, NASA, and DOE—to tackle different aspects of S2S predictability and land–atmosphere interactions.
Please email Meg Fowler to express your interest in joining.
2025 In-person meeting
The second ESPAT community workshop, focused on the role of land-atmosphere interactions on predictability at subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) timescales, was held on June 16-18 at the NSF NCAR Mesa Lab in Boulder.
To join the initiative, please email Meg Fowler to express your interest in joining the working group. Please include a brief paragraph on your research interests within the realm of S2S predictability and land-atmosphere interactions.