A review on development, challenges and future perspectives of ensemble forecast

This paper reviews the development of ensemble forecast and the primary techniques employed in the main ensemble prediction systems (EPS) designed by China and other countries. Here, the emphasis is placed on the development of China Meteorological Administration (CMA) global and regional EPSs, focusing on operational technologies, initial and model perturbation methods, and the applications of ensemble forecast. Besides, the analysis is provided to present the similar forecast skills by comparing the verification results of CMA EPS and other major international NWP centers. According to the trend of the EPS towards convective-scale and sea-land-air-ice coupling, the paper addresses the key challenges in ensemble forecast technologies on the aspects of operation, science, integrated with Artificial Intelligence (AI), the integration of weather and climate, and user requirements. The summaries and future perspectives of ensemble forecast are concluded in the end.