Information of the forecast/hindcasts system
 (More details are on http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/model/index.html)
 
1)Whether the system is numerical, empirical or hybrid
    Numerical
2)Whether the system is deterministic or probabilistic
    Probabilistic
3)Model type and resolution
    The model used in the Ensemble Prediction System for long-range forecasting is the coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation model (CGCM), which consists of the AGCM (a TL95 version of the GSM) and the ocean general circulation model (OGCM) - the Meteorological Research Institute Community Ocean Model (MRI.COM).
4)Ensemble size
    51 members for forecast and 10 members for hindcast
5)Boundary conditions specifications
    SST: One-tier method; flux adjustment
    Sea ice: climatology
6)List of parameters being assessed
    T2m (temperature at 2metres), prp (precipitation) and sst (sea surface temperature)
7)Lead times and for each parameter
    one month
8)Period of verification
    three-month
9)Number of hindcasts and the dates/years of these hindcasts
    30 years from 1979 to 2008. Initial dates are the beginning of month and the middle of the preceding month.
10) Details of verification data sets used
    T2m: JRA-25/JCDAS (Japanese 25-year Reanalysis/JMA Climate Data Assimilation System).
    Precipitation: GPCP (GPCP Version 2.1 Combined Precipitation Data Set).  If once the dataset has a missing data during the hindcast period, statistics are not calculate.
    SST: COBE-SST (Centennial in-situ Observation-Based Estimates of variability of SST and marine meteorological variables).