Heads up on a heat wave

摘要

A model for forecasting seasonal climate in the United States was able to predict months in advance the intense summer heat that scorched the country's central plains last year (pictured). Lifeng Luo at Michigan State University in East Lansing and Yan Zhang at Scinovation in Princeton, New Jersey, compared the observed number of extremely hot days in the region last summer with temperature-anomaly predictions made by the National Weather Services upgraded Climate Forecast System, which became operational at the end of March 2011.