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We propose a new forecast evaluation scheme in the context of models that incorporate errors of the verification data. We rely on existing scoring rules and incorporate uncertainty and error of the verification data through a hidden variable and the conditional expectation of scores. By considering scores to be random variables, one can access the entire range of their distribution and illustrate that the commonly used mean score can be a misleading representative of the distribution.

We develop a new technique to integrate realistic uncertainties in probabilistic models of past sea-level change. The new framework performs better than past methods (in precision, accuracy, bias, and model fit) because it enables the incorporation of previously unused data and exploits correlations in the data. This method has the potential to assess the validity of past estimates of extreme sea-level rise and highstands providing better context in which to place current sea-level change.

Cape Town is situated in a small but ecologically and climatically highly diverse and vulnerable pocket of South Africa uniquely receiving its rain mostly in winter. We show complex structures in the spatial patterns of rainfall seasonality and year-to-year changes in rainfall within this domain, tied to spatial differences in the rain-bearing winds. This allows us to develop a new spatial subdivision of the region to help future studies distinguish spatially distinct climate change responses.

After a new climate model is constructed, a natural question is whether it generates realistic simulations. Here, realistic does not mean that the detailed patterns on a particular day are correct, but rather that the statistics over many years are realistic. Past approaches to answering this question often neglect correlations in space and time. This paper proposes a method for answering this question that accounts for correlations in space and time.

The Day Zero water crisis affecting Cape Town after the severe 2015–2017 drought motivated renewed research interest into causes and projections of rainfall variability and change in this water-stressed region. Unusually few wet months and very wet days characterised the Day Zero Drought. Its extent expanded as it shifted gradually north-eastward, concurrent with changes in the weather systems driving drought. Our results emphasise the need to consider the interplay between drought drivers.

In this study, we introduce a deep learning algorithm to establish the relationship between wind and waves in order to predict the latter. The performance of the proposed method has been evaluated both on the output of numerical wave models and on in situ data and compared to other statistical methods developed by our research team. The results obtained confirm the interest of deep learning methods for forecasting ocean data.