Climate Forecast System Reforecast, for 1981 to 2011

The NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) was designed and executed as a global, high resolution, coupled atmosphere-ocean-land surface-sea ice system to provide the best estimate of the state of these coupled domains over the 31-year period of 1979 to 2009. A complete Reforecast of CFS version 2, over the 30-year period (1981-2011) has been created in order to provide stable calibration and skill estimates of the new system, for operational seasonal and sub seasonal prediction at NCEP. Coupled full 9-month forecasts from initial conditions every 5 days apart (for all 4 cycles on that day) have been made for each calendar year with the T126L64 GFS with half-hourly coupling to the ocean (MOM4 at 0.25 degree equatorial, 0.5 degree global). Total number of 9-month forecasts is 73x4 for each year, amounting to 8468 forecast runs for the full period. In addition to the 9-month runs, there is a full season run from every 0Z cycle over a 12-year period (1999-2010) for a total of 4380 runs. There is also a short 45-day forecast from every 6Z, 12Z and 18Z cycle over the same 12-year period (1999-2010) for a total of 13140 runs.