Dynamical downscaling of GloSea5 over Ethiopia

A mainly qualitative assessment of GloSea5 and downscaled GloSea5 forecasts demonstrated that the downscaled forecasts could be considered a faithful disaggregation of the coarse resolution GloSea5 forecasts. Forecasts of average seasonal rainfall anomalies in the three regions of Ethiopia studied were captured in three of the four years with the wet season of 2006 incorrectly forecast in all three regions, and the 21 year 3-member hindcast had a correlation of 0.65 with observations. Whilst exploring the potential for the downscaled GloSea5 to generate skillful forecasts of rainy season onset and dry spells we note that both the global and regional model have skill with onset correctly predicted as being early or late in more than 75% of cases for some regions.