Subseasonal-to-Seasonal Prediction: The Gap Between Weather and Climate Forecasting (2nd Edition)

November 19, 2025

“Subsesonal-to-Seasonal Prediction: The Gap Between Weather and Climate Forecasting (2nd Edition)” book cover.

The second edition of a book entitled “Subseasonal-to-Seasonal Prediction: The Gap Between Weather and Climate Forecasting” was recently published and released online via ScienceDirect. The book was co-edited by Andrew W. Robertson (CCSR) and Frederic Vitart (ECMWF) and contains 24 chapters, each covering a particular topic in Subseasonal and Seasonal research, including both descriptions of scientific advancements over the last decade and illustrations of potential end user benefits from improved Subseasonal and Seasonal forecasting of extremes.

CW3E S&S (Subseasonal & Seasonal) Lead Researcher Mike DeFlorio contributed to a chapter entitled “Subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction of weather extremes”, along with co-authors Frederic Vitart, Christopher Cunningham (CEMADEN), Daniela I.V. Domeisen (Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETC Zürich), Laura Ferranti (ECMWF), Brian Golding (UK Met Office), Debra Hudson (Australia BoM), Charles Jones (UC Santa Barbara), Emanuel Dutra (University of Lisbon), Christophe Lavaysse (Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement), Joanne Robbins (UK Met Office), and Michael K. Tippett (Columbia University). In this chapter, the authors summarize Subseasonal and Seasonal prediction of two classes of extreme events: a) large-scale and long-lasting events with potential predictability weeks in advance for their onset, evolution and decay; and b) small-scale and shorter duration events that were not predictable individually weeks in advance, but that contained elements that could be predictable at longer lead times due to their interaction with large-scale circulation patterns.

This chapter contains a full subsection on Subseasonal and Seasonal predictability of atmospheric rivers, and includes a figure originally published in DeFlorio et al. (2024) which highlights an international effort led by CW3E and collaborating institutions to summarize and synthesis experimental seasonal precipitation forecasts during the historic winter of 2022/23 over the western U.S. region.

Figure 1. Synthesis table of experimental seasonal precipitation forecasts for Winter 2022/23 (November-January and November-March), issued by various organizations, institutions and universities. Results are summarized over three key regions of interest to western US water resource managers: Northern California (NorCal), Southern California (SoCal), and the Upper Colorado River Basin (Upper Colo). The symbols +, -, ∅, and U Included as Figure 16.6 in book chapter, and originally published as Figure 6 in DeFlorio et al. (2024).

Book Citation

Vitart, F., C Cunningham, M. J. DeFlorio, E. Dutra, L. Ferranti, B. Golding, D. Hudson, C. Jones, C. Lavaysse, J. Robbins and M. Tippett (2025), Sub-seasonal to seasonal prediction of weather extremes. In A. Robertson and F. Vitart (Eds). Sub-seasonal to Seasonal prediction (2nd Edition): the gap between weather and climate forecasting, Elsevier doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-811714-9.00017-6.

References

DeFlorio, M. J., Sengupta, A., Castellano, C. M., Wang, J., Zhang, Z., Gershunov, A., Guirguis, K., Niño, R. L., Clemesha, R. E. S., Pan, M., Xiao, M., Kawzenuk, B., Gibson, P. B., Scheftic, W., Broxton, P. D., Switanek, M. B., Yuan, J., Dettinger, M. D., Hecht, C. W., Cayan, D. R., Cornuelle, B. D., Miller, A. J., Kalansky, J., Delle Monache, L., Ralph, F. M., Waliser, D. E., Robertson, A. W., Zeng, X., DeWitt, D. G., Jones, J., & Anderson, M. L. (2024). From California’s Extreme Drought to Major Flooding: Evaluating and Synthesizing Experimental Seasonal and Subseasonal Forecasts of Landfalling Atmospheric Rivers and Extreme Precipitation during Winter 2022/23. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 105(1), E84–E104. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-22-0208.1.