Time mean and variability of the scale-decomposed atmospheric water budget in a 25-year simulation of the Canadian Regional Climate Model over North America

The scaled-decomposed atmospheric water budget over North America is investigated through the analysis of 25 years of simulation by the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM) driven by the NCEP–NCAR reanalyses for the period 1975–1999. The time average and time variability of the atmospheric water budget for the winter and summer seasons are decomposed into their large-scale and small-scale components to identify the added value of the regional model. For the winter season, the intra-seasonal transient-eddy variance is the main temporal variability. The large- and small-scale terms are of the same order of magnitude, and are large over both coasts and weak over the continent. For the summer season, the time–mean atmospheric water budget is rather different to that of winter, with maximum values over the south-eastern part of the continent. The summer intra-seasonal variance is about twice stronger than in winter and also dominates the variability, but the inter-monthly variance is non-negligible and can be in part associated to North American Monsoon System. Over the continent, the intra-seasonal climatological variance is dominated by the variability of the small scales. The small scales, that is those scales that are only resolved in the regional model but not in the reanalyses, contribute to the added value in a regional climate simulation. In the winter season, the added value of the CRCM is large and dominated by oceanic forcing, while in summer, it is dominant (larger than the large scales) and controlled mainly by convective processes.     

Revisiting the Basin-edge Effect at Kobe During the 1995 Hyogo-Ken Nanbu Earthquake

The basin edge effect, i.e., the interference of the direct S wave with the surface wave diffracted off the basin edge has been invoked by many authors to explain the damage distribution during the January 17, 1995 Hyogo-Ken Nanbu (Kobe) earthquake. Here we present the results of numerical experiments obtained with the spectral element method in 2-D geometry. Our results confirm that the amplification of horizontal motion close to the basin edge can be twice as large as the one measured in the center of the basin. This additional amplification is shown to depend strongly on the edge geometry and on frequency, due to physical dispersion of diffracted surface waves. In particular we obtain maximal amplification around 3 Hz, at frequencies critical for buildings.     

Tropical influence on boreal summer mid-latitude stationary waves

While organized tropical convection is a well-known source of extratropical planetary waves, state-of-the-art climate models still show serious deficiencies in simulating accurately the atmospheric response to tropical sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies and the associated teleconnections. In the present study, the remote influence of the tropical atmospheric circulation is evaluated in ensembles of global boreal summer simulations in which the Arpege-Climat atmospheric General Circulation Model (GCM) is nudged towards 6-h reanalyses. The nudging is applied either in the whole tropical band or in a regional summer monsoon domain. Sensitivity tests to the experimental design are first conducted using prescribed climatological SST. They show that the tropical relaxation does not improve the zonal mean extratropical climatology but does lead to a significantly improved representation of the mid-latitude stationary waves in both hemispheres. Low-pass filtering of the relaxation fields has no major effect on the model response, suggesting that high-frequency tropical variability is not responsible for extratropical biases. Dividing the nudging strength by a factor 10 only decreases the magnitude of the response. Model errors in each monsoon domain contribute to deficiencies in the model??s mid-latitude climatology, although an exaggerated large-scale subsidence in the central equatorial Pacific appears as the main source of errors for the representation of stationary waves in the Arpege-Climat model. Case studies are then conducted using either climatological or observed SST. The focus is first on summer 2003 characterized by a strong and persistent anticyclonic anomaly over western Europe. This pattern is more realistic in nudging experiments than in simulations only driven by observed SST, especially when the nudging domain is centred over Central America. Other case studies also show a significant tropical forcing of the summer mid-latitude stationary waves and suggest a weak influence of prescribed observed SST in the northern extratropics. Results therefore indicate that improving the tropical divergent circulation and its response to tropical SST anomalies remains a key issue for increasing the skill of extratropical seasonal predictions, not only in the winter hemisphere but also in the boreal summer hemisphere where the prediction of heatwave and drought likelihood is expected to become an important challenge with increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases.     

Understanding the West African monsoon variability and its remote effects: an illustration of the grid point nudging methodology

General circulation models still show deficiencies in simulating the basic features of the West African Monsoon at intraseasonal, seasonal and interannual timescales. It is however, difficult to disentangle the remote versus regional factors that contribute to such deficiencies, and to diagnose their possible consequences for the simulation of the global atmospheric variability. The aim of the present study is to address these questions using the so-called grid point nudging technique, where prognostic atmospheric fields are relaxed either inside or outside the West African Monsoon region toward the ERA40 reanalysis. This regional or quasi-global nudging is tested in ensembles of boreal summer simulations. The impact is evaluated first on the model climatology, then on intraseasonal timescales with an emphasis on North Atlantic/Europe weather regimes, and finally on interannual timescales. Results show that systematic biases in the model climatology over West Africa are mostly of regional origin and have a limited impact outside the domain. A clear impact is found however on the eddy component of the extratropical circulation, in particular over the North Atlantic/European sector. At intraseasonal timescale, the main regional biases also resist to the quasi-global nudging though their magnitude is reduced. Conversely, nudging the model over West Africa exerts a strong impact on the frequency of the two North Atlantic weather regimes that favor the occurrence of heat waves over Europe. Significant impacts are also found at interannual timescale. Not surprisingly, the quasi-global nudging allows the model to capture the variability of large-scale dynamical monsoon indices, but exerts a weaker control on rainfall variability suggesting the additional contribution of regional processes. Conversely, nudging the model toward West Africa suppresses the spurious ENSO teleconnection that is simulated over Europe in the control experiment, thereby emphasizing the relevance of a realistic West African monsoon simulation for seasonal prediction in the extratropics. Further experiments will be devoted to case studies aiming at a better understanding of regional processes governing the monsoon variability and of the possible monsoon teleconnections, especially over Europe.     

Scale decomposition of atmospheric water budget over West Africa during the monsoon 2006 from NCEP/GFS analyses

NCEP/GFS analysis is used to investigate the scale dependence and the interplay between the terms of the atmospheric water budget over West Africa using a dedicated decomposition methodology. The focus is on a 2-month period within the active monsoon period of 2006. Results show that the dominant scales of seasonal mean precipitation and moisture flux divergence over West Africa during the monsoon period are large scales (greater than 1,400 km) except over topography, where mean values of small scales (smaller than 900 km) are strong. Correlations between moisture flux divergences in monsoon and African Easterly Jet layers and precipitation indicate that precipitation is strongly correlated to moisture flux divergence via both large-scale and small-scale processes, but the correlation signal is quite different depending on the region and vertical layer considered. The analysis of the scales associated with the rainfall and the local evaporation over 3 different regions shows that positive correlation exists over the ocean between precipitation and evaporation especially at large scale. Over the continent south of the Sahel, the correlation is negative and driven by large scale. Over the northern part of Sahel, positive correlation is found, only at small scales during the active monsoon period. Lag correlation reveals that the maximum evaporation over the Sahel occurs 1–3 days after the maximum precipitation with maximum contribution from small-scale processes during the first day. This study shows that NCEP/GFS reproduces well the known atmospheric water budget features. It also reveals a new scale dependence of the relative role of each term of the atmospheric water budget. This indicates that such scale decomposition approach is helpful to clarify the functioning of the water cycle embedded in the monsoon system.