PREDICTABILITY LEVELS OF MONTHLY FORECAST BASED ON TIME-AVERAGED OCEAN/ATMOSPHERE VARIABLES —A NATURALLY OCCURRING ANALOGUE STUDY

Naturally occurring analogues between the monthly averaged data of 1000,500 and 100 hPa geopotential height and the sea surface temperature (SST) in the Pacific,Atlantic and Indian Oceans during the period January 1956-December 1972 are used to study the potential predictability levels of forecasting the monthly mean ocean/atmosphere variables.It is found that in the ocean-atmosphere system the forecast of geopotential height may be more difficult than SST,and that the predictability level of monthly mean geopotential height anomaly calculated from the corresponding monthly mean SST appears relatively poor,but it can be improved by using the past observational data of monthly mean SST/geopotential fields.