Seasonal forecasting of drought and temperature extremes as part of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS)

Climate extremes can impact societies in various ways: from nuances in daily lives to full humanitarian crises. Droughts  are usually slow onset extremes but can be highly disruptive and affect millions of people every year. Warm temperature extremes (e.g. heat waves) can exacerbate droughts and their impacts and trigger a faster drought evolution. Combined drought and heat waves can lead to devastating consequences. For example, 2022 was a very active year in terms of drought or combined drought and heat waves, affecting particularly hard several regions of the world (e.g. Europe, China, southern South America and East Africa). In a context of risk management and civil protection, the use of operationally available seasonal climate forecasts can provide actionable information to reduce the risks and the impacts of these events on societies with different levels of development and adaptive capacities. 

 

Within the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS), the European and Global Drought Observatories (EDO and GDO, respectively) provide real time drought and temperature extreme monitoring products freely available and displayed through two dedicated web services. Recent efforts have been targeting the optimal integration and use of multi-system forecasting products to enhance the early warning component of the service. This contribution provides an overview of first results in terms of  initial multi-model skill assessment of forecasts available through the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). It also discusses future avenues to improve skill in regions with limited predictability, for example by applying physically-based sampling techniques.