Comparisons of the Thermal Effects of the Tibetan Plateau with NCEP-I and ERA-40 Reanalysis Data

Because of a lack of sufficient observations over the Tibetan Plateau (TP), the measurement of the strength of the thermal effects of the TP is a challenging issue, yet of crucial importance for climate research. In this study, two sets of daily reanalysis data (1979–2001) from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction reanalysis version 1 (NCEP-I) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts 40-year Reanalysis data (ERA-40) are used to calculate the atmospheric diabatic heating effects of the TP and the adjacent regions with an inverse algorithm. The observational data obtained from the recent atmospheric experiments over the TP are applied to verify and evaluate the results from NCEP-I and ERA-40 reanalysis data, respectively. It is found that the ERA-40 results are closer to the observations in terms of the structure and seasonal variation of the vertical profile of the diabatic heating over the TP. The horizontal distributions of the apparent heat source are quite reasonable over Asia for both the NCEP-I and ERA-40 results.

RÉSUMÉ?[Traduit par la rédaction] À cause d'un manque d'observations sur le plateau tibétain, la mesure de la force des effets thermiques du plateau tibétain est un problème difficile tout en étant d'importance cruciale pour la recherche climatique. Dans cette étude, nous utilisons deux ensembles de données quotidiennes de réanalyse (1979–2001) issues de la version 1 de la réanalyse des National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP-I) ainsi que les données de réanalyse de 40 ans du Centre européen pour les prévisions météorologiques à moyen terme (ERA-40) pour calculer les effets du réchauffement atmosphérique diabatique sur le plateau tibétain et les régions adjacentes au moyen d'un algorithme inverse. Nous appliquons les données d'observation recueillies lors des récentes expériences atmosphériques sur le plateau tibétain pour vérifier et évaluer ces résultats des données de réanalyse de NCEP-I et ERA-40, respectivement. Nous trouvons que les résultats de ERA-40 sont plus proches des observations en ce qui concerne la structure et la variation saisonnière du profil vertical du réchauffement diabatique sur le plateau tibétain. Les distributions horizontales de la source de chaleur apparente sont très raisonnables au-dessus de l'Asie, tant pour les résultats de NCEP-I que de ERA-40.     

How to construct future IDF curves,under changing climate,for sites with scarce rainfall records?

Optimal designs of stormwater systems rely very much on the rainfall Intensity–Duration–Frequency (IDF) curves. As climate has shown significant changes in rainfall characteristics in many regions, the adequacy of the existing IDF curves is called for particularly when the rainfall are much more intense. For data sparse sites/regions, developing IDF curves for the future climate is even challenging. The current practice for such regions is, for example, to ‘borrow’ or ‘interpolate’ data from regions of climatologically similar characteristics. A novel (3‐step) Downscaling‐Comparison‐Derivation (DCD) approach was presented in the earlier study to derive IDF curves for present climate using the extracted Dynamically Downscaled data an ungauged site, Darmaga Station in Java Island, Indonesia and the approach works extremely well. In this study, a well validated (3‐step) DCD approach was applied to develop present‐day IDF curves at stations with short or no rainfall record. This paper presents a new approach in which data are extracted from a high spatial resolution Regional Climate Model (RCM; 30 × 30 km over the study domain) driven by Reanalysis data. A site in Java, Indonesia, is selected to demonstrate the application of this approach. Extremes from projected rainfall (6‐hourly results; ERA40 Reanalysis) are first used to derive IDF curves for three sites (meteorological stations) where IDF curves exist; biases observed resulting from these sites are captured and serve as very useful information in the derivation of present‐day IDF curves for sites with short or no rainfall record. The final product of the present‐day climate‐derived IDF curves fall within a specific range, +38% to +45%. This range allows designers to decide on a value within the lower and upper bounds, normally subjected to engineering, economic, social and environmental concerns. Deriving future IDF curves for Stations with existing IDF curves and ungauged sites with simulation data from RCM driven by global climate model (GCM ECHAM5) (6‐hourly results; A2 emission scenario) have also been presented. The proposed approach can be extended to other emission scenarios so that a bandwidth of uncertainties can be assessed to create appropriate and effective adaptation strategies/measures to address climate change and its impacts. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluation of dynamically downscaled reanalysis precipitation data for hydrological application

Skilful and reliable precipitation data are essential for seasonal hydrologic forecasting and generation of hydrological data. Although output from dynamic downscaling methods is used for hydrological application, the existence of systematic errors in dynamically downscaled data adversely affects the skill of hydrologic forecasting. This study evaluates the precipitation data derived by dynamically downscaling the global atmospheric reanalysis data by propagating them through three hydrological models. Hydrological models are calibrated for 28 watersheds located across the southeastern United States that is minimally affected by human intervention. Calibrated hydrological models are forced with five different types of datasets: global atmospheric reanalysis (National Centers for Environmental Prediction/Department of Energy Global Reanalysis and European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts 40‐year Reanalysis) at their native resolution; dynamically downscaled global atmospheric reanalysis at 10‐km grid resolution; stochastically generated data from weather generator; bias‐corrected dynamically downscaled; and bias‐corrected global reanalysis. The reanalysis products are considered as surrogates for large‐scale observations. Our study indicates that over the 28 watersheds in the southeastern United States, the simulated hydrological response to the bias‐corrected dynamically downscaled data is superior to the other four meteorological datasets. In comparison with synthetically generated meteorological forcing (from weather generator), the dynamically downscaled data from global atmospheric reanalysis result in more realistic hydrological simulations. Therefore, we conclude that dynamical downscaling of global reanalysis, which offers data for sufficient number of years (in this case 22 years), although resource intensive, is relatively more useful than other sources of meteorological data with comparable period in simulating realistic hydrological response at watershed scales. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comparison of EnOI and EnKF regional ocean reanalysis systems

This study compares two regional eddy resolving ocean reanalysis systems, based on the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) and ensemble optimal interpolation (EnOI), focusing on data assimilation aspects. Both systems are configured for the Tasman Sea using the same ocean model with 0.1° resolution and commonly available observations of satellite altimetry, sea surface temperature and subsurface temperature and salinity. The primary goals are to quantify the difference in performance of the EnKF and EnOI and investigate how important this difference might be from an oceanographic perspective. We find that both systems generally constrain mesoscale circulation in the region, with some exceptions for the East Australian Current separation region, the most energetic and chaotic part of the domain. Overall, the EnKF is found to consistently outperform the EnOI, producing on average 9–21% smaller innovations. The EnKF also has better forecast skill relative to the persisted analysis than the EnOI. For SST the EnKF forecast outperforms persisted analysis by about 17%, which indicates that the surface circulation is mainly constrained. The EnKF and EnOI are shown to produce qualitatively different increments of unobserved or sparsely observed variables; however, we find only moderate improvements of the EnKF over EnOI in subsurface temperature fields when compared against withheld XBT observations. We attribute this lack of a major improvement in subsurface reconstruction to the inability of the EnKF to linearly constrain the system due to initialisation shock, model error caused by open boundaries, and possibly insufficient observations.     

北极冰海耦合模式对两种不同大气再分析资料响应的分析

本文中我们比较了Climate Forecast System Reanalysis(CFSR)高分辨率的再分析数据集和低分辨率的Japanese 25-year Reanalysis Project(JRA25)再分析数据集在向下短波辐射、向下长波辐射、10m风场、近地面气温、降水、湿度上的不同,发现二者差异最大的为降水数据,其次为向下短波辐射数据、向下长波辐射数据。用这两个数据集驱动同一冰海耦合模式,CFSR强迫的海冰、北冰洋中层水和加拿大海盆温盐结构与实测相比有很大差距,等密度面上的地转流速在加拿大海盆和欧亚海盆比JRA25强迫的结果高20%,同时等密度面的深度偏深、位温偏高,在弗拉姆海峡的流通量也比海洋再分析数据Simple Ocean Data Assimilation(SODA)偏多。CFSR的向下辐射数据更加接近实测,采用此数据的敏感性实验模拟结果与实测符合的更好。对于海冰的模拟,云量起着至关重要的作用,降水带来的淡水通量通过影响大西洋入流水携带的热量进而影响到冰区。此外,CFSR过量的降水也是二者对于北冰洋温盐结构、弗拉姆海峡流通量以及地转流强度模拟产生偏差的主要原因。尽管风场的分辨率不同,在海盆尺度上对于海冰和海水温盐结构的影响并不大。     

北欧海比容高度及其与卫星高度计海表面高度异常的比较

In this study the steric height anomaly which is calculated from the hydrological data(EN3) is compared with the sea level anomaly derived from satellite altimetry in the Nordic Seas. The overall pattern of steric height is that it is higher in the margin area and lower in the middle area. The extreme values of steric height linear change from1993 to 2010 occur in the Lofoten Basin and off the Norwegian coast, respectively. Such a distribution may be partly attributed to the freshening trend of the Nordic Seas. The correlation between SLA(sea level anomaly) and SHA(steric height anomaly) is not uniform over the Nordic Seas. The time series of SLA and SHA agree well in the Lofoten Basin and northern Norwegian Basin, and worse in the northern Norwegian Sea, implying that the baroclinic effect plays a dominant role in most areas in the Norwegian Sea and the barotropic effect plays a dominant role in the northern Norwegian Sea. The weaker correlations between SLA and SHA in the Greenland and Iceland Seas lead a conclusion that the barotropic contribution is significant in these areas. The area-mean SHA over the entire Nordic Seas has similar amplitudes compared with the SLA during 1996–2002, but SHA has become lower than SLA, being less than half of SLA since 2006.     

中国55年来地面水汽压网格数据集的建立及精度评价

对气象要素网格化是气候变化研究中避免空间抽样误差的有效方法之一.文中采用薄盘光滑样条插值法(ANUSPLIN),在考虑站点经度、纬度和海拔高度的基础上,对中国55年来地面水汽压站点资料进行空间插值,得到了中国陆地水汽压年和月平均值1°×1°网格数据集.精度检验表明:中国年水汽压插值误差普遍小于0.3 hPa;而月水汽压的插值误差由于受水汽压周期变化的影响,表现出周期性变化的特点.一般夏季较大,最大误差在0.5 hPa左右,冬季较小,约为0.2 hPa.在考虑站点海拔与对应网格DEM差值大小的基础上,建立实测水汽压值与对应网格水汽压值年序列,并进一步分析二者的相关关系,表明:(1)二者具有很好的相关性,相关系数为0.88-0.96;(2) 能很好地模拟地形影响,得到的网格水汽压可以较好地代表实测水汽压的变化趋势.由此建立了中国近55年来地面水汽压的年序列.其趋势表明:近55年来中国年平均水汽压呈增加趋势,其线性趋势为0.52 hPa/(100 a),其中西部增加趋势大于东部,且以夏季的增大趋势最为显著.结合近50年来气温的变化趋势说明:在中国,气温每增加1 ℃,大气中年平均水汽含量约增加3.15%.     

COMPARISONS OF THE WEST PACIFIC SUBTROPICAL HIGH AND THE SOUTH ASIA HIGH BETWEEN NCEP/NCAR AND ECMWF REANALYSIS DATASETS

Comparisons of the west Pacific subtropical high with the South Asia High are made using the NCEP/NCAR and ECMWF 500 hPa and 100 hPa monthly boreal geopotential height fields for the period 1961 - 2000. Discrepancies are found for the time prior to 1980. The west Pacific subtropical high in the NCEP/NCAR data is less intense than in ECMWF data before 1980. The range and strength of the west Pacific subtropical high variation described by the NCEP/NCAR data are larger than those depicted by ECMWF data. The same situation appears in the 100-hPa geopotential field. These discoveries suggest that the interdecadal variation of the two systems as shown by the NCEP/NCAR data may not be true. Besides, the South Asia High center in the NCEP/NCAR data is obviously stronger than in the ECMWF data during the periods 1969, 1979 - 1991 and 1992 - 1995. Furthermore, the range is larger from 1992 to 1995.     

几种再分析地表气压资料在中国区域的适用性评估

应用台站观测资料对ERA-40, NCEP/NCAR以及NCEP/DOE再分析地表气压产品在中国不同区域、不同年代和不同季节的适用性进行了评估。分析发现, 几种再分析产品虽然能在一定程度上反映出观测资料所具有的时空分布特征, 但它们之间的差异却具有明显的区域和季节变化特征, 即冬季小而夏季大、东部地区小而西部地区大; 同时还发现ERA-40和NCEP/NCAR再分析产品在20世纪70年代以前均与观测资料有相对较大的差别, 特别是NCEP/NCAR在70年代以前的夏季气压值过于偏低, 从而夸大了很多地区的年代际变化特征。相比而言, ERA-40地表气压的长期变化趋势以及时空演变规律在中国大多数地区要优于NCEP/NCAR再分析产品, 特别是在中国西部地区。分析还表明, NCEP/DOE虽与观测资料存在一定的系统性偏差, 却与另外两种再分析产品有着较为相似的年际变化特征及趋势。