Research

Climate research at IRI seeks to advance climate services and climate information for policymakers through:

  1. Development of climate forecast methodologies that address local to global scales, and time scales from subseasonal to seasonal, and seasonal to inter-decadal;
  2. Improved understanding of the physical mechanisms of global and regional climate variability and predictability on subseasonal-to-interdecadal time scales, through modeling and diagnostic studies;
  3. Co-development of tailored capacity-building and communication materials, including data, forecasts, and tools, for improved climate-informed decision making.

Current IRI climate research activities include:

  • Development of global multi-model calibrated, probabilistic seasonal forecasts of precipitation and temperature, based on NMME and C3S models;
  • Development of regional probabilistic seasonal forecasts using the NextGen approach;
  • Development of subseasonal global and regional forecast capabilities through calibration and multi-model ensembles from the S2S and SubX databases; 
  • Diagnostic studies to identify the physical mechanisms of observed and modeled climate variability, predictability, and change, including the influence of external forcing, natural and anthropogenic
  • Forecast calibration and verification methods, involving local (i.e., gridbox-by-gridbox) and non-local (i.e., pattern-based) approaches;
  • Understanding how climate drivers at multiple timescales interact with each other (cross-timescale interference);
  • Furthering the understanding of the role of key climate drivers on society through their impacts on agriculture, food security, water resources, public health, and disaster;
  • Seasonal and subseasonal predictability studies of daily weather characteristics, including rainfall frequency, extremes, and wet and dry spell risk;   
  • Predictability and prediction of the Monsoons, including onset/demise, and active/break spells.

IRI’s Climate Group