The Comprehensive Historical Upper-Air Network

Stickler, Alexander; Grant, Andrea; Ewen, Tracy; Ross, Thomas F.; Vose, Russell S.; Comeaux, Joseph; Bessemoulin, P.; Jylhä, Kirsti; Adam, W.; Jeannet, P.; Nagurny, A. P.; Sterin, Alexander; Allan, R. J.; Compo, Gilbert P.; Griesser, Thomas; Brönnimann, Stefan

doi:10.1175/2009bams2852.1

Cited by 78 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Figure 5 compares the 20CRv2 with a long record of upper-air data: a compiled series of kite, aircraft, balloon, and radiosonde observations of 500 hPa geopotential height and 850 hPa air temperature made from 1905 to 2006 at Lindenberg, Germany (Adam and Dier, 2005) from the Comprehensive Historical Upper Air Network dataset (CHUAN; Stickler et al, 2010). The 20CRv2 analysis is interpolated to the time and location of these observations.…”

Section: Evaluation Of Synoptic Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project

Compo

Whitaker

Sardeshmukh

et al. 2011

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

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2,652

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† The contribution of R. J. Allan was written in the course of his employment at the Met Office, UK, and is published with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. ‡ The contributions of these authors were prepared as part of their official duties as US Federal Government employees.The Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR) project is an international effort to produce a comprehensive global atmospheric circulation dataset spanning the twentieth century, assimilating only surface pressure reports and using observed monthly sea-surface temperature and sea-ice distributions as boundary conditions. is similar to that of current three-day operational NWP forecasts. Intercomparisons over the second half-century of these surface-based reanalyses with other reanalyses that also make use of upper-air and satellite data are equally encouraging.It is anticipated that the 20CR dataset will be a valuable resource to the climate research community for both model validations and diagnostic studies. Some surprising results are already evident. For instance, the long-term trends of indices representing the North Atlantic Oscillation, the tropical Pacific Walker Circulation, and the Pacific-North American pattern are weak or non-existent over the full period of record. The long-term trends of zonally averaged precipitation minus evaporation also differ in character from those in climate model simulations of the twentieth century.

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Section: Evaluation Of Synoptic Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project

Compo

Whitaker

Sardeshmukh

et al. 2011

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

Self Cite

3,076

2,652

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“…It is therefore important to compare the new historical reanalysis data sets with observations from the past, which however have been unavailable until recently. A large amount of historical upper-air data was recently compiled by STICKLER et al (2010). The newly digitized data will add to this collection.…”

Section: Re-evaluating Berson's Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Aerological observations in the Tropics in the Early Twentieth Century

Brönnimann¹,

Stickler²

2013

metz

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In the first decades of the 20 th century, aerological observations were for the first time performed in tropical regions. One of the most prominent endeavours in this respect was ARTHUR BERSON's aerological expedition to East Africa. Although the main target was the East African monsoon circulation, the expedition provided also other insights that profoundly changed meteorology and climatology. BERSON observed that the tropical tropopause was much higher and colder than that over midlatitudes. Moreover, westerly winds were observed in the lower stratosphere, apparently contradicting the high-altitude equatorial easterly winds that were known since the Krakatoa eruption (''Krakatoa easterlies''). The puzzle was only resolved five decades later with the discovery of the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO). In this paper we briefly summarize the expedition of BERSON and review the results in a historical context and in the light of the current research. In the second part of the paper we re-visit BERSON's early aerological observations, which we have digitized. We compare the observed wind profiles with corresponding profiles extracted from the ''Twentieth Century Reanalysis'', which provides global three-dimensional weather information back to 1871 based on an assimilation of sea-level and surface pressure data. The comparison shows a good agreement at the coast but less good agreement further inland, at the shore of Lake Victoria, where the circulation is more complex. These results demonstrate that BERSON's observations are still valuable today as input to current reanalysis systems or for their validation.

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“…Upper Air Network (CHUAN, Stickler et al 2010, Grant et al 2009a, Brönnimann 2003). An overview of the stations north of 60 °N is given in Fig.…”

Section: A Observationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The series in CHUAN were supplemented for the period from 5 1958 to present using data from the Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (IGRA, Durre et al 2006) with RAOBCORE version 1.4 corrections (Haimberger 2007). With very few exceptions (see Stickler et al 2010, for details) no new stations were added from 1958 on.…”

Section: A Observationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A multi-data set comparison of the vertical structure of temperature variability and change over the Arctic during the past 100 years

et al. 2012

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A multi-data set comparison of the vertical structure of temperature variability and change over the Arctic during the past 100 yearsBrönnimann, S; Grant, A N; Compo, G P; Ewen, T; Griesser, T; Fischer, A M; Schraner, M; Stickler, A Abstract: We compare the daily, interannual, and decadal variability and trends in the thermal structure of the Arctic troposphere using eight observation-based, vertically resolved data sets, four of which have data prior to 1948. Comparisons on the daily scale between historical reanalysis data and historical upper-air observations were performed for Svalbard for the cold winters 1911/1912 and 1988/1989, the warm winters 1944/1945, and the International Geophysical Year 1957/1958. Excellent agreement is found at mid-tropospheric levels. Near the ground and at the tropopause level, however, systematic differences are identified. On the interannual time scale, the correlations between all data sets are high, but there are systematic biases in terms of absolute values as well as discrepancies in the magnitude of the variability. The causes of these differences are discussed. While none of the data sets individually may be suitable for trend analysis, consistent features can be identified from analyzing all data sets together. To illustrate this, we examine trends and 20-year averages for those regions and seasons that exhibit large sea-ice changes and have enough data for comparison. In the summertime Pacific Arctic and the autumn eastern Canadian Arctic, the lower tropospheric temperature anomalies for the recent two decades are higher than in any previous 20-year period. AbstractWe compare the variability and trends in the thermal structure of the Arctic troposphere in eight observation-based, vertically resolved data sets, four of which have data prior to 1948.

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The Comprehensive Historical Upper-Air Network

Cited by 78 publications

References 26 publications

The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project

The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project

Aerological observations in the Tropics in the Early Twentieth Century

A multi-data set comparison of the vertical structure of temperature variability and change over the Arctic during the past 100 years

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