Advances in the Subseasonal Prediction of Extreme Events: Relevant Case Studies across the Globe

Abstract Extreme weather events have devastating impacts on human health, economic activities, ecosystems, and infrastructure. It is therefore crucial to anticipate extremes and their impacts to allow for preparedness and emergency measures. There is indeed potential for probabilistic subseasonal prediction on time scales of several weeks for many extreme events. Here we provide an overview of subseasonal predictability for case studies of some of the most prominent extreme events across the globe using the ECMWF S2S prediction system: heatwaves, cold spells, heavy precipitation events, and tropical and extratropical cyclones. The considered heatwaves exhibit predictability on time scales of 3–4 weeks, while this time scale is 2–3 weeks for cold spells. Precipitation extremes are the least predictable among the considered case studies. ­Tropical cyclones, on the other hand, can exhibit p…