Developing a global operational seasonal hydro-meteorological forecasting system: GloFAS-Seasonal v1.0

摘要

Global overviews of upcoming flood and drought events arekey for many applications, including disaster risk reduction initiatives.Seasonal forecasts are designed to provide early indications of such eventsweeks or even months in advance, but seasonal forecasts for hydrologicalvariables at large or global scales are few and far between. Here, we presentthe first operational global-scale seasonal hydro-meteorological forecastingsystem: GloFAS-Seasonal. Developed as an extension of the Global FloodAwareness System (GloFAS), GloFAS-Seasonal couples seasonal meteorologicalforecasts from ECMWF with a hydrological model to provide openly availableprobabilistic forecasts of river flow out to 4 months ahead for the globalriver network. This system has potential benefits not only for disaster riskreduction through early awareness of floods and droughts, but also forwater-related sectors such as agriculture and water resources management, inparticular for regions where no other forecasting system exists. We describethe key hydro-meteorological components and computational framework ofGloFAS-Seasonal, alongside the forecast products available, before discussinginitial evaluation results and next steps.