Ensemble Forecast Methods for Numerical Weather Forecast and Climate Prediction: Thinking and Prospect

This article reviews the research progress of ensemble forecast methods for weather and climate from the perspective of initial errors, model errors, and the combined effects of the above two. The authors clarify the advantages of traditional methods; meanwhile, they comment on the limitations of these methods. Finally, the authors propose some ideas on developing more advanced ensemble forecast methods, raise some challenging problems that need to be resolved, and address possible applications of the ensemble methods.