Highlights of climate prediction study and operation in China over the past decades

Weather forecast means day-to-day meteorological prediction for up to two weeks, while climate prediction is a long-term prediction from one month to decades or even longer. In China, climate prediction started quite early, both in scientific research and in meteorological operation. A lot of achievements in climate research and prediction application have been made over the past half-century. In this paper, the authors briefly highlight these achievements, including the initial recognition of the East Asian monsoon, Meiyu and cold surge, climate prediction development in the early stage, development of dynamical climate prediction, development of operational climate prediction model and its initialization, research on statistical climate prediction approach, intensive study on the variability and predictability of East Asian climate system, expansion of the scope of climate prediction and development of new prediction approaches, etc. Prospects on climate prediction in the future are given as well in the last part of this paper, with the focus on multi-scale climate variability and their interaction, intra-seasonal to inter-decadal climate prediction, improvements of the climate system model and initialization, and hybrid dynamical-statistical climate prediction methods.