• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.56 no.9
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• pp.529-541
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• 2023

Due to the growing concern over forecasting extreme weather events such as droughts caused by climate change, there has been a rising interest in seasonal meteorological forecasts that offer ensemble predictions for the upcoming seven months. Nonetheless, limited research has been conducted in South Korea, particularly in assessing their effectiveness at the catchment-scale. In this study, we assessed the accuracy of ECMWF's seasonal forecasts (including precipitation, temperature, and evapotranspiration) for the period of 2011 to 2020. We focused on 12 multi-purpose reservoir catchments and compared the forecasts to climatology data. Continuous Ranked Probability Skill Score method is adopted to assess the forecast skill, and the linear scaling method was applied to evaluate its impact. The results showed that while the seasonal meteorological forecasts have similar skill to climatology for one month ahead, the skill decreased significantly as the forecast lead time increased. Compared to the climatology, better results were obtained in the Wet season than the Dry season. In particular, during the Wet seasons of the dry years (2015, 2017), the seasonal meteorological forecasts showed the highest skill for all lead times.