Neural network forecasts of the tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures

A nonlinear forecast system for the sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies over the whole tropical Pacific has been developed using a multi-layer perceptron neural network approach, where sea level pressure and SST anomalies were used as predictors to predict the five leading SST principal components at lead times from 3 to 15 months. Relative to the linear regression (LR) models, the nonlinear (NL) models showed higher correlation skills and lower root mean square errors over most areas of the domain, especially over the far western Pacific (west of 155°E) and the eastern equatorial Pacific off Peru at lead times longer than 3 months, with correlation skills enhanced by 0.10–0.14. Seasonal and decadal changes in the prediction skills in the NL and LR models were also studied.