The NCEP and NCAR are cooperating in a project (denoted "reanalysis") to produce a 40-year record of global analyses of atmospheric fields in support of the needs of the research and climate monitoring communities. This effort involves the recovery of land surface, ship, rawinsonde, pibal, aircraft, satellite, and other data; quality controlling and assimilating these data with a data assimilation system that is kept unchanged over the reanalysis period 1957-96. This eliminates perceived climate jumps associated with changes in the data assimilation system.The NCEP/NCAR 40-yr reanalysis uses a frozen state-of-the-art global data assimilation system and a database as complete as possible. The data assimilation and the model used are identical to the global system implemented operationally at the NCEP on 11 January 1995, except that the horizontal resolution is T62 (about 210 km). The database has been enhanced with many sources of observations not available in real time for operations, provided by different countries and organizations. The system has been designed with advanced quality control and monitoring components, and can produce 1 mon of reanalysis per day on a Cray YMP/8 supercomputer. Different types of output archives are being created to satisfy different user needs, including a "quick look" CD-ROM (one per year) with six tropospheric and stratospheric fields available twice daily, as well as surface, top-of-the-atmosphere, and isentropic fields. Reanalysis information and selected output is also available on-line via the Internet (http//:nic.fb4.noaa.gov:8000). A special CD-ROM, containing 13 years of selected observed, daily, monthly, and climatological data from the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis, is included with this issue. Output variables are classified into four classes, depending on the degree to which they are influenced by the observations and/or the model. For example, "C" variables (such as precipitation and surface fluxes) are completely determined by the model during the data assimilation and should be used with caution. Nevertheless, a comparison of these variables with observations and with several climatologies shows that they generally contain considerable useful information. Eight-day forecasts, produced every 5 days, should be useful for predictability studies and for monitoring the quality of the observing systems.The 40 years of reanalysis should be completed in early 1997. A continuation into the future through an identical Climate Data Assimilation System will allow researchers to reliably compare recent anomalies with those in earlier decades. Since changes in the observing systems will inevitably produce perceived changes in the climate, parallel reanalyses (at least 1 year long) will be generated for the periods immediately after the introduction of new observing systems, such as new types of satellite data.NCEP plans currently call for an updated reanalysis using a state-of-the-art system every five years or so. The successive reanalyses will be greatly facilitated by the generation ...

A new coupled global NCEP Reanalysis for the period 1979-present is now available, at much higher temporal and spatial resolution, for climate studies. T he first reanalysis at NCEP (all acronyms are defined in the appendix), conducted in the 1990s, resulted in the NCEP-NCAR reanalysis (Kalnay et al. 1996), or R1 for brevity, and ultimately covered many years, from 1948 to the present (Kistler et al. 2001). It is still being executed at NCEP, to the benefit of countless users for monthly, and even daily, updates of the current state of the atmosphere. At the same time, other reanalyses were being conducted, namely, ERA-15 (Gibson et al. 1997) was executed for a more limited period (1979-93) at the ECMWF, COLA conducted a short reanalysis covering the May 1982-November 1983 period (Paolino et al. 1995), and NASA GSFC conducted a reanalysis covering the 1980-94 period (Schubert et al. 1997). The general purpose of conducting reanalyses is to produce multiyear global state-of-the-art gridded representations of atmospheric states, generated by a constant model and a constant data assimilation system. To use the same model and data assimilation over a very long period was the great advance during the 1990s, because gridded datasets available before 1995 had been created in real time by ever-changing models and analysis methods, even by hand analyses prior to about 1965. The hope was that a reanalysis,

This article is accompanied by a CD-ROM that contains the complete documentation of the NCEP-NCAR Reanalysis and all of the data analyses and forecasts. It is provided to members through the sponsorship of SAIC and GSC. 1 • Introduction The National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) have cooperated in a project (denoted "reanalysis") to produce a retroactive record of more than 50 years of global analyses of atmospheric fields in support of the needs of the research and climate monitoring communities. This effort involved the recovery of land surface, ship, rawinsonde, pibal, aircraft, satellite, and other data. These data were then quality controlled and assimilated with a data assimilation system kept unchanged over the reanalysis period. This eliminated perceived climate jumps associated with changes in the operational (real time)

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The global climate during 1999 was impacted by Pacific cold episode (La Nina) conditions throughout the year, which resulted in regional precipitation and atmospheric circulation patterns across the Pacific Ocean and the Americas that are generally consistent with those observed during past cold episodes. The primary La Nina-related precipitation anomalies included 1) increased rainfall across Indonesia, and a nearly complete disappearance of rainfall across the east-central and eastern equatorial Pacific; 2) above-normal rains across northwestern and northern Australia; 3) increased monsoon rains across the Sahel region of western Africa; 4) above-average rains over southeastern Africa, 5) above-average rains over the Caribbean Sea and portions of Central America, and 6) below-average rains in southeastern South America. The La Nina also contributed to persistent cyclonic circulation anomalies in the subtropics of both hemispheres, which flanked the area of suppressed convective activity over the eastern half of the equatorial Pacific. In the Northern Hemisphere this anomaly feature contributed to a pronounced westward retraction of the wintertime East Asian jet stream, which subsequently impacted precipitation and storm patterns across the eastern North Pacific and western North America. The La Nina-related pattern of tropical rainfall also contributed to a very persistent pattern of anticyclonic circulation anomalies in the middle latitude of both hemispheres, extending from the eastern Pacific across the Atlantic and Africa eastward to Australasia. This anomaly pattern was associated with an active Atlantic hurricane season, an inactive eastern North Pacific hurricane season, above-average rains in the African Sahel, and an overall amplification of the entire southeast Asian summer monsoon complex. The active 1999 North Atlantic hurricane season featured 12 named storms, 8 of which became hurricanes, and 5 of which became intense hurricanes. The peak of activity during mid-August-October was accompanied by low vertical wind shear across the central and western Atlantic, along with both a favorable structure and location of the African easterly jet. In contrast, only 9 tropical storms formed over the eastern North Pacific during the year, making it one of the most inactive years for that region in the historical record. This relative inactivity was linked to a persistent pattern of high vertical wind shear that covered much of the main development region of the eastern North Pacific. Other regional aspects of the short-term climate included: 1) above-average wintertime precipitation and increased storminess in the Pacific Northwest, United States; 2) above-average monsoonal rainfall across the southwestern United States; 3) drought over the northeastern quadrant of the United States during April-mid-August; 4) hurricane-related flooding in the Carolinas during September; 5) drought over the south-central United States during July-November; 6) below-average rainfall in the Hawaiian Islands throughout the year, ...