Temperature

Monthly Temperature Outlook: December 2020

Issued: 28 Nov 2020

For December 2020, above-normal temperature is favoured over much of Maritime Continent with below- to near-normal over much of Mainland Southeast Asia.

For December 2020, all three models – NCEP, ECMWF and UK Met Office (Figures 1-3) – predict above-normal temperature over the Maritime Continent, except over Java where there is no dominant tercile predicted by ECMWF (Figure 3) and UK Met Office predicts an increase chance of near-normal temperature (Figure 2). The models’ skill for above-normal temperature for the Maritime Continent is moderate to high.

For central and eastern Mainland Southeast Asia, near- to below-normal temperature is predicted by ECMWF and UK Met Office (Figure 2 and 3), while NCEP (Figure 1) shows near- to above-normal temperature. This integrates to near- to below-normal temperature in the multi-model ensemble (Figure 4). The models’ skill for this region is moderate to low.

Elsewhere in Mainland Southeast Asia, model skill is low.

 

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Figure 1: Temperature tercile summary predictions of NCEP model for December 2020.
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Figure 2: Temperature tercile summary predictions of ECMWF model for December 2020 (contains modified Copernicus C3S information).
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Figure 5: Average climatological temperature for December based on ERA5 (Reference period: 1981-2010).

The qualitative outlook is assessed for the region in general. For specific updates on the national scale, the relevant ASEAN National Meteorological and Hydrological Services should be consulted.