Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics © European Geosciences Union 2003 Conditional nonlinear optimal perturbation and its applications

Abstract. Conditional nonlinear optimal perturbation (CNOP) is proposed to study the predictability of numeri-cal weather and climate prediction. A simple coupled ocean-atmosphere model for ENSO is adopted as an example to show its applicability. In the case of climatological mean state being the basic state, it is shown that CNOP tends to evolve into El Niño or La Niña event more probably than lin-ear singular vector (LSV) on the condition that CNOP and LSV are of the same magnitude of norm. CNOP is also em-ployed to study the prediction error of El Niño and La Niña events. Comparisons between CNOP and LSV demonstrate that CNOP is more applicable in studying the predictability of the models governing the nonlinear motions of oceans and atmospheres.