Standard assessments of climate forecast skill can be misleading

Assessments of climate forecast skill depend on choices made by the assessor. In this perspective, we use forecasts of the El Niño-Southern-Oscillation to outline the impact of bias-correction on skill. Many assessments of skill from hindcasts (past forecasts) are probably overestimates of attainable forecast skill because the hindcasts are informed by observations over the period assessed that would not be available to real forecasts. Differences between hindcast and forecast skill result from changes in model biases from the period used to form forecast anomalies to the period over which the forecast is made. The relative skill rankings of models can change between hindcast and forecast systems because different models have different changes in bias across periods. Many different methods have been developed to forecast climate phenomena like the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) which makes a fair comparison of their capabilities crucial. In this perspective, the authors discuss how choices in the evaluation method can lead to an overestimated perceived skill of ENSO forecasts.