A hybrid dynamical-statistical approach for predicting winter precipitation over eastern China

Correlation analysis revealed that winter precipitation in six regions of eastern China is closely related not only to preceding climate signals but also to synchronous atmospheric general circulation fields. It is therefore necessary to use a method that combines both dynamical and statistical predictions of winter precipitation over eastern China (hereinafter called the hybrid approach). In this connection, seasonal real-time prediction models for winter precipitation were established for the six regions. The models use both the preceding observations and synchronous numerical predictions through a multivariate linear regression analysis. To improve the prediction accuracy, the systematic error between the original regression model result and the corresponding observation was corrected. Cross-validation analysis and real-time prediction experiments indicate that the prediction models using the hybrid approach can reliably predict the trend, sign, and interannual variation of regionally averaged winter precipitation in the six regions of concern. Averaged over the six target regions, the anomaly correlation coefficient and the rate with the same sign of anomaly between the cross-validation analysis and observation during 1982–2008 are 0.69 and 78%, respectively. This indicates that the hybrid prediction approach adopted in this study is applicable in operational practice.