Journal article
On the relationship between reliability diagrams and the ‘signal-to-noise paradox’
- Abstract:
- The ‘signal-to-noise paradox’ for seasonal forecasts of the winter NAO is often described as an ‘underconfident’ forecast and measured using the ratio-of-predictable components metric (RPC). However, comparison of RPC with other measures of forecast confidence, such as spread-error ratios, can give conflicting impressions, challenging this informal description. We show, using a linear statistical model, that the ‘paradox’ is equivalent to a situation where the reliability diagram of any percentile forecast has a slope exceeding 1. The relationship with spread-error ratios is shown to be far less direct. We furthermore compute reliability diagrams of winter NAO forecasts using seasonal hindcasts from the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts and the UK Meteoro logical Office. While these broadly exhibit slopes exceeding 1, there is evidence of asymmetry between upper and lower terciles, indicating a potential violation of linearity/Gaussianity. The limitations and benefits of reliability diagrams as a diagnostic tool are discussed.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.1MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1029/2023GL103710
Authors
- Publisher:
- American Geophysical Union
- Journal:
- Geophysical Research Letters More from this journal
- Volume:
- 50
- Issue:
- 14
- Article number:
- e2023GL103710
- Publication date:
- 2023-07-18
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-06-19
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1944-8007
- ISSN:
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0094-8276
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1489127
- Local pid:
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pubs:1489127
- Deposit date:
-
2023-07-03
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Strommen et al
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- © 2023 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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