The prediction on the 2015/16 El Nino event from the perspective of FIO-ESM

Recently atmospheric and oceanic observations indicate the tropical Pacific is at the El Nino condition. However, it's not clear whether this El Nino event of this year is comparable to the very strong one of 1997/98 which brought huge influence on the whole world. In this study, based on the Ensemble Adjusted Kalman Filter (EAKF) assimilation scheme and First Institute of Oceanography-Earth System Model (FIO-ESM), the assimilation system is setup, which can provide reasonable initial conditions for prediction. And the hindcast results suggest the skill of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) prediction is comparable to other dynamical coupled models. Then the prediction for 2015/16 El Nino by using FIO-ESM is started from 1 November 2015. The ensemble results indicate that the 2015/16 El Nino will continue to be strong. By the end of 2015, the strongest strength is very like more than 2.0 degrees C and the ensemble mean strength is 2.34 degrees C, which indicates 2015/16 El Nino event will be very strong but slightly less than that of 1997/98 El Nino event (2.40 degrees C) calculated relative a climatology based on the years 1992-2014. The prediction results also suggest 2015/16 El Nino event will be a transition to ENSO-neutral level in the early spring (FMA) 2016, and then may transfer to La Nina in summer 2016.