Meteorogical Service of Canada 


For both surface air temperature and precipitation, the MSC produce each month, a global three month
anomaly forecast with zero lead time. 
The seasonal forecast system of the Meteorogical Service of Canada (MSC) is a probabilistic system build on
a 12 member ensemble from two numerical models: 

1) The Global Environmental Multiscale (GEM) model from Recherche en Prévision Numérique (RPN) group. 
(Côté et al. 1998)[1]
2) The Second Generation Atmospheric General Circulation Model (AGCM2) from the Canadian Climate Centre
for modelling and analysis (CCCma). AGCM2 is described in McFarlane et al. 1992[2].

Specification of the RPN GEM model:
- Resolution Horizontal: uniform 1.875 degrees
- Resolution Vertical:   50 hybrid levels
- Land-surface: Force-Restore scheme Deardorff (1978)
- Upper lid: 5 mb.

Specification of the CCCma AGCM2 model:
- Resolution: AGCM2 has ten vertical levels and employs a triangular spectral truncation having 32
longitudinal waves (T32/L10).
- Land-surface: Force-Restore scheme
- Upper lid: 5 mb.

The models climatology comes from the 26 year (1969-1994) hindcasts of the seasonal Historical Forecasting
Project (HFP) 

The verification is done over the period 1969-1994 for the surface air temperature with the
CRU(UKMO/Hadley) observations data set. For precipitation, the verification is done over the period
1979-1994 with the GPCP(NASA) data set.


REFERENCES

[1] Côté, J., S. Gravel, A. Méthot, A. Patoine, M. Roch, and A. Staniforth, 1998: The operational CMC/MRB
global environmental multiscale (GEM) model: Part I - Design considerations and formulation. Mon. Wea.
Rev., 126, (June issue).

[2] McFarlane, N.A., G.J. Boer, J.-P. Blanchet, and M. Lazare (1992): The Canadian Climate Centre 
Second-Generation General Circulation Model and Its Equilibrium Climate. J. of Climate, 5, 1013-1044.