Preliminary Evaluation of NMME Hindcast Results from FIM/iHYCOM Coupled Model

Shan Sun1, Rainer Bleck1,2, Stan Benjamin1 and Haiqin Li1

Abstract
A global coupled model aimed at intra-seasonal and interannual prediction is under development at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory. It uses the FIM atmospheric model and an ocean model 'iHYCOM', basically an icosahedral grid version of HYCOM. Both components are 3-dimensional grid point models, laid out on a common icosahedral horizontal grid, and using an adaptive hybrid-isentropic/hybrid-isopycnic vertical coordinate in FIM and iHYCOM, respectively. We followed the protocol for the 30 year hindcast experiments from National Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) and carried out seasonal prediction using FIM/iHYCOM coupled model. Results of these tests and an optimal configuration of the FIM-iHYCOM coupled model are presented. We will evaluate MJO patterns and other model performance indicators on seasonal time scales against observations and model output from CFSv2.