Forecasts of climate variability at the decadal, seasonal, and monthly time scales will be discussed in this session. This will include presentations and discussions of predictions for a time horizon of up to ten years from dynamical ensemble forecast systems and statistical models. Further topics include forecast quality assessment, physical mechanisms for skill and predictability, role of anthropogenic climate change, implementation of seamless forecasting systems, ensemble forecast generation and initialization, approaches to address model uncertainty, downscaling and calibration, and demonstrations of end-user value for climate risk applications and climate change adaptation using the recently developed climate services framework. A special focus will be put on results from the CMIP5 decadal prediction experiments.

The session includes contributions of the former session "Probabilistic climate prediction on multi-decadal to multi-centennial time scales".