Evaluating the Performance of the Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System (AMPS) in Forecasting Extreme Weather Events in the Antarctic Peninsula

Undoubtedly, the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) is one of the hottest regions in the world, where global warming is manifesting with a significant increase in air temperature, but also where extreme phenomena such as heat waves and winter-rainfall, both eventually causing ice/snow melting and reduction of the sea-ice formation which are already taking place. Projections of climate models under the Coupled Model Inter‐comparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) indicate that near-surface air temperature and precipitation (in particular, the rain type) will continue to increase during the 21st century in the AP, being more significant in the worst scenario projection (SSP585). Therefore, it can be inferred that extreme weather events affecting the AP region can increase in frequency and intensity. Given these predictions, it is necessary to know if the operational models of the daily forecast will be able to forecast the occurrence of extreme events in the southern polar region. The only way to answer this question is to evaluate how the current models have been able to forecast extreme events occurring in the present.

Here, we evaluate the performance of the Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System (AMPS) model in forecasting three events. These are:

(1) the record-high temperatures and surface melt at the Antarctic Peninsula in February 2022,

(2) the record minimum pressure occurred in the Bellingshausen Sea sector, in October 2022, and

(3) the warmth and rainfall event that took place in the northern tip of the AP in midwinter 2023.