Authors
Craig S Long, Masatomo Fujiwara, Sean Davis, Daniel M Mitchell, Corwin J Wright
Publication date
2017/12/7
Journal
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Volume
17
Issue
23
Pages
14593-14629
Publisher
Copernicus GmbH
Description
Two of the most basic parameters generated from a reanalysis are temperature and winds. Temperatures in the reanalyses are derived from conventional (surface and balloon), aircraft, and satellite observations. Winds are observed by conventional systems, cloud tracked, and derived from height fields, which are in turn derived from the vertical temperature structure. In this paper we evaluate as part of the SPARC Reanalysis Intercomparison Project (S-RIP) the temperature and wind structure of all the recent and past reanalyses. This evaluation is mainly among the reanalyses themselves, but comparisons against independent observations, such as HIRDLS and COSMIC temperatures, are also presented. This evaluation uses monthly mean and 2.5° zonal mean data sets and spans the satellite era from 1979–2014. There is very good agreement in temperature seasonally and latitudinally among the more recent reanalyses (CFSR, MERRA, ERA-Interim, JRA-55, and MERRA-2) between the surface and 10 hPa. At lower pressures there is increased variance among these reanalyses that changes with season and latitude. This variance also changes during the time span of these reanalyses with greater variance during the TOVS period (1979–1998) and less variance afterward in the ATOVS period (1999–2014). There is a distinct change in the temperature structure in the middle and upper stratosphere during this transition from TOVS to ATOVS systems. Zonal winds are in greater agreement than temperatures and this agreement extends to lower pressures than the temperatures. Older reanalyses (NCEP/NCAR, NCEP/DOE, ERA-40, JRA-25 …
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