The Global Tropical Hazards and Benefits Assessment at NOAA/CPC: Increasing communication between the science and user communities

The Global Tropics Hazards (GTH) and Benefits Assessment is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center (CPC) operational product that provides an outlook for the upcoming 1 to 2 week time period for tropical areas expecting enhanced or suppressed rainfall and regions where conditions are especially favorable for tropical cyclone formation. The product is generated through a collaborative scientific effort from many operational weather and climate centers worldwide, including weekly consultation and technical input from a variety of tropical climate experts from CPC, other government agencies, and academia. Although the target forecast timescale is 1-2 weeks the physical basis for the outlook draws upon phenomena spanning the spectrum of spatial and temporal scales. These include the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), other coherent subseasonal tropical variability, interactions with extratropical circulation regimes, statistical and dynamical tropical cyclone tools, and numerical weather forecast guidance.

Since its inception in 2007 the GTH product has been delivered to the climate community through the CPC web interface. Recently, in addition to the web based forecast, a user-oriented approach has been initiated which includes a weekly teleconference to disseminate the rationale for the official GTH forecast product to a wide array of stakeholders, highlighted by a non-technical discussion of tropical climate phenomena expected to impact socioeconomically sensitive regions of the global tropics over the next 2 weeks. This “outreach” approach enables two-way communication between the science and user communities, effectively enhancing the GTH product development process at CPC, while fostering enhanced understanding of tropical climate variability and prediction by the users.