We present a recently developed regional, coupled climate model and its preliminary application to ENSO impacts in the Southeast U.S. and the North Atlantic Basin. The regional model is a spectral perturbation model which predicts deviations from a global coupled ocean-atmospheric model. The atmospheric component of the coupled global model is an enhanced version of the FSU Global Spectral Model. The Ocean model is a version of the HOPE model developed at the Max Planck Institute. The global model is currently run at T63 resolution and the regional model has about a 40 km grid spacing.
We have performed predictions of the 1987, 1988 and 1997 winter seasons as well as the Atlantic hurricane seasons of 1995 and 1997. Preliminary results from the global coupled model indicates that the model reproduces many of the large-scale ENSO climate variations including the shift in the ITCZ and SPCZ as well as a PNA-like response in the 500 mb height field. The regional model simulated the variation in the precipitation and temperature patterns in the Southeast U.S. during the winter seasons. For the hurricane season forecasts, the regional model was able to produce more realistic hurricane-like vortices and tracks, compared to the global model, and was able to reproduce the increased tropical activity of the 1995 season. A model climatology is currently being developed to allow us to make a more quantitative statement.