A seasonal climate and streamflow forecasting testbed for the Colorado River Basin

CBRFC, NIDIS, USBR, and others have documented a consistent need for climate forecasts from one season to two years lead time to support a variety of applications, and particularly for streamflow forecasting for water, energy and agricultural management. The Colorado River basin presents a challenge due to the limited forecast skill that can be harnessed from traditional sources (e.g., ENSO) even at shorter lead times for runoff-generating headwaters in the upper basin. Nonetheless, management and planning objectives related to the larger reservoirs that USBR manages make use of predictions out to two full years. To facilitate intercomparison of research results toward improving climate and flow prediction at these lead times, CBRFC has formed a tested that targets CBRFC's USBR-oriented predictions in the Colorado River basin. The testbed contains climate and flow hindcasts for eight critical watersheds, defining the current state of the practice to support basin water management. These forecasts include those derived from the CFS and GFS, and from the CPC objective consolidation. The testbed environment also illustrates pathways for transfer of promising methods into the operational forecast environment, and define the constraints applicable to those pathways. This presentation describes the testbed and the skill of the hindcasts it currently contains, and invites additional contributions from the climate and flow forecasting community.