Evaluation of Four Reanalysis Datasets against Radiosonde over Southwest Asia

Alghamdi, Ali S.

doi:10.3390/atmos11040402

Cited by 19 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…While all datasets give a realistic representation of the major characteristics of the temperature structure within the TTL, ERA‐5 and CFSR are the best performing. However, Alghamdi (2020), and in a comparison between radiosonde measurements and reanalyses data over southwestern Asia, found that ERA‐5 is the worst performing of the four considered, with ERA‐Interim giving the best scores. In summary, while ERA‐5 has been found to outperform the other reanalysis products for several meteorological applications, it may not necessarily be the best performing in the Middle East.…”

Section: Model Set‐up and Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the analysis of a summertime convective event in a hyperarid environment

Francis

Temimi

Fonseca

et al. 2020

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

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A summertime convective event that developed on 5 September 2017 over the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is investigated in this study. Atmospheric profiles from a ground-based microwave radiometer along with satellite observations and in situ data from three weather stations in the UAE were used. The event was simulated using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, forced with four input datasets: Global Forecast System (GFS), Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR), and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts ERA-5 and ERA-Interim reanalyses. The afternoon and evening convection was triggered by the intrusion of a mid-level trough from midlatitudes and was favoured by the convergence over land of thermally forced maritime air masses. Near-surface observations at a weather station revealed a 7 • C drop in air temperature, a doubling of the wind speed to 9 m⋅s −1 in 30 min, and a shift in wind direction from easterly, to southerly and then westerly in about 45 min, associated with the passage of the cold pool emanating from a Mesoscale Convective System (MCS). At the location where the microwave radiometer was deployed, the pre-squall low and wake low signatures are also captured, with a 5 m⋅s −1 increase in the wind speed in just 5 min. The observed features of the studied MCS were found to compare with those reported for MCSs in the Tropics. The four experiments gave a similar performance, although the GFS simulation generally generated higher skill scores. The investigated MCS event was not captured by WRF, which was attributed to a misrepresentation of soil moisture in the model. This study highlights the difficulties regional models like WRF may have in reproducing MCSs over arid/hyperarid regions, which may result in a misrepresentation of their impacts in climate projection studies. K E Y W O R D S hyperarid region, infrared brightness temperature, meso-high and wake low, mesoscale convective system, microwave radiometer, WRF model This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Section: Model Set‐up and Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the analysis of a summertime convective event in a hyperarid environment

Francis

Temimi

Fonseca

et al. 2020

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

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“…A valuable alternative solution to observational datasets is atmospheric reanalysis data (Baatz et al, 2021), which combines vast amounts of observations with numerical models using data assimilation techniques to provide a globally complete gridded and continuous temporal coverage dataset. However, the accuracy of reanalysis products varies strongly (Dee et al, 2011) especially for variables that are very sensitive to atmospheric dynamics and to the main parameters of the assimilation systems, such as the quantity and quality of the assimilated observations, the assimilation scheme (e.g., variational, Kalman filter), and the background forecast model, particularly the spatial and temporal resolutions (Simmons et al, 2004;Alghamdi, 2020;Gleixner et al, 2020). The usability of reanalyses data for long-term climate applications, including trend estimation, is controversial as discussed in the literature, for specific regions in previous reanalyses generations (e.g., Thorne, 2008;Thorne and Vose, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As pointed out, comprehensive inter-comparisons between the old and new generations of reanalyses are provided in the literature. However, among the recent generations, the products' quality and suitability for a broad set of climate studies or applications are still under discussion or a few discussed for specific regions (e.g., Graham et al, 2019;Alghamdi, 2020;Keller and Wahl, 2021;Simmons, 2022). Furthermore, ERA5, the newest global reanalysis product and one of the most used reanalysis families, has not been extensively intercompared and discussed at the current time compared to the other products.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intercomparison of Atmospheric Upper-Air Temperature From Recent Global Reanalysis Datasets

Essa

Cagnazzo²,

Madonna³

et al. 2022

Front. Earth Sci.

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Atmospheric temperature is a key variable to detect and attribute climate change. Due to the relative sparseness of ground-based observations and heterogeneity of satellite data, global atmospheric reanalysis products are considered valuable datasets for studying and monitoring the climate, since these usually ensure spatially complete and continuous temporal coverage. Consequently, evaluating differences among the existing reanalyses is key to identifying inconsistencies. To this aim, the current study intercompares the climatological mean, variability, and linear trends for upper air temperature provided from four recent atmospheric reanalysis products (ERA5, ERA-Interim, MERRA-2, and JRA-55) The Reanalysis Multi-Model Ensemble-mean (RMME) is used as a comparator. Radiosonde observations are included for comparison on the regional scale (tropics). The results reveal that all evaluated reanalyses provide a consistent reproduction of the upper-air temperature profile. Temperature differences from RMME within ±0.25 K are found in both the troposphere and lower stratosphere, except for a few specific regions. Larger differences (>± 1.5 K) and discrepancies among the datasets are found in the upper stratosphere. Agreement between reanalyses increased after 1998. Differences in the temperature time series and seasonal cycle at the regional scales are smaller in the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes than in the tropics and Southern Hemisphere. A robust cooling trend in the lower stratosphere during the period of largest ozone depletion (1980-1997) and a warming trend in the troposphere for the period 1998-2018 are clearly found, at the global level, in all the datasets. Temperature trends and variability in the tropics are consistent in all reanalysis datasets with the homogenized radiosonde records from the lower to middle troposphere and in the lower stratosphere. However, large differences are found in the upper troposphere, tropical tropopause layer (TTL), and middle stratosphere. The well-known temperature variability in the lower stratosphere associated with Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) is captured in both reanalyses and observational datasets. Among the reanalyses, ERA5 shows the smallest temperature difference with respect to homogenized upper-air radiosoundings records.

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“…2009;Mao et al 2010;Marques et al 2010;Mooney et al 2011;Alfred et al 2011;You et al 2011You et al , 2013Cornes and Jones. 2013;Chen et al 2014;Taguchi et al 2017;Zhu et al 2017;He et al 2018;Alghamdi. 2020).…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

Evaluation of Re-analyses Over China based on the Temporal Asymmetry of Daily Temperature Variability

Chai

Huang

Yang

et al. 2021

Preprint

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As an intrinsic feature of daily surface air temperature (SAT) variability found in station measurements, temporal asymmetry (TA) can be taken as an evaluation metric to access the quality of SAT re-analysis product. In this study, TA calculated from four SAT variables, i.e. daily mean SAT (Tmean), daily maximum SAT (Tmax), daily minimum SAT (Tmin) and diurnal temperature range (TDTR=Tmax-Tmin), is applied to evaluate synoptic-scale performance of four reanalysis products (NCEP-2, JRA-55, ERA-I and ERA-5) over China. The results show that four re-analyses overall overestimate the TA of daily Tmax and Tmin variability over China, but with a comparatively consistent estimated TA for Tmean. Moreover, the TA of Tmean variability for these four re-analyses shares high spatial consistency with those from the observation. However, four re-analyses own the similar region-dependent spatial patterns of overestimated TA for Tmax and Tmin variability, especially for Tmax. Since high TA is an indicator for strong nonlinear feature, only Tmean reanalysis is the most suitable to explore synoptic-scale extreme events, such as heat waves and cold waves, which are highly related to the strong nonlinear processes.

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Evaluation of Four Reanalysis Datasets against Radiosonde over Southwest Asia

Cited by 19 publications

References 34 publications

On the analysis of a summertime convective event in a hyperarid environment

On the analysis of a summertime convective event in a hyperarid environment

Intercomparison of Atmospheric Upper-Air Temperature From Recent Global Reanalysis Datasets

Evaluation of Re-analyses Over China based on the Temporal Asymmetry of Daily Temperature Variability

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