Performance Evaluation of Weather@home2 Simulations over West African Region

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Abstract
Weather and climate forecasting, using climate models, have become essential tools and life-savers in the West African region; in spite of the fact that climate models do not fully comply with attributes of forecast qualities—RASAP: reliability, association, skill, accuracy, and precision. The objective of this paper is to quantitatively evaluate, in comparison to CRU and ERA5 datasets, the RASAP compliance-level of the weather@home2 modeling system (w@h2). Findings from some statistical evaluations show that, to a moderately significant extent, w@h2 model provides useful information during the monsoon seasons; skills to capture the Little Dry Season over the Guinea zone; predictive skills for the onset season; ability to reproduce all the annual characteristics of the surface maximum air temperature over the region; as well as skill to detect heat waves that usually ravage West Africa during the boreal spring. The model displays traces of attributes that are needed for seasonal climate predictions and applications. Deficiencies in the quantitative reproducibility point to the facts that the model does provide a reliability akin to that of regional climate models. This paper further furnishes a prospective user with information on whether the model might be “useful or not” for a particular application.
Funding Information
  • 11th European Union’s Development Fund (2019/410-300, ACP/FED/038-833, DE340AC02-05CH11231)
  • African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (2019/410-300, ACP/FED/038-833, DE340AC02-05CH11231)
  • BNP Attribution Project of the African Climate and Development Initiative (2019/410-300, ACP/FED/038-833, DE340AC02-05CH11231)
  • Director, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research of the U.S. Department of Energy (2019/410-300, ACP/FED/038-833, DE340AC02-05CH11231)
  • Endeavour Program of the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment of Aoteaora, New Zealand (2019/410-300, ACP/FED/038-833, DE340AC02-05CH11231)

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