A review on the development, challenges and future prospects of ensemble forecast

This paper reviews the development of ensemble weather forecast and primary techniques employed in major ensemble prediction systems (EPS) developed by China and other countries. 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 application of ensemble forecast. Besides, comparative analyses of forecast skills of CMA EPS with those from other major international NWP centers are presented. Following the trend of the EPS towards convective-scale and Artific Intelligence (AI) model, the paper addresses key challenges in ensemble forecast technologies from the perspectives of operation, science, integration with AI, as well as the integration of weather and climate, and user demands. The summary and future prospects of ensemble forecast are presented at the end.