Cyclone activities as inferred from the Twentieth Century Reanalysis version 3 (20CRv3) for 1836-2015

<p>Preliminary results obtained from tracking cyclones in the ensemble-average and individual members of the NOAA-CIRES-DOE Twentieth Century Reanalysis version 3 (20CRv3) ensemble for the period 1836-2015 will be presented. Comparison with tracking in the 20CRv2c ensemble-average series will also be shown.</p><p>The results indicate that the 20CRv3 is an improvement in representing cyclone climate and variability compared to previous versions (20CRv2c or 20CRv2). However, as in previous versions, the 20CRv3 ensemble-average fields are too smooth to use for tracking cyclones and studying cyclone climate, especially for the period before 1960 for the NH and for the entire reanalysis period for the SH, and that there are still temporal inhomogeneity issues in the 20CRv3, especially in the SH and in the early period for the NH, due to the increases over time of observations available for assimilation. The improvements arise from the use of a higher model resolution and the assimilation of more observations. They include that the 20CRv3 ensemble shows cyclones of higher intensities and a higher number of deep cyclones (center pressure ≤ 960 hPa) in the Northern Hemisphere than the 20CRv2c counterpart. Historical trends of cyclone activity and their uncertainties will be discussed based on the results of tracking the individual members of the 20CRv3 ensemble, with the temporal inhomogeneity issues being taken into account.  </p>

The Representation of the South Pacific Convergence Zone in the Twentieth Century Reanalysis

The South Pacific convergence zone (SPCZ) is the largest rainfall feature in the Southern Hemisphere, and is a critical component of the climate for South Pacific island nations and territories. The small size and isolated nature of these islands leaves them vulnerable to short- and long-term changes in the position of the SPCZ. Its position and strength is strongly modulated by El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), leading to large interannual variability in rainfall across the southwest Pacific including seasonal droughts and pluvials. Currently much of the analysis about SPCZ activity has been restricted to the satellite observation period starting in 1979. Here, the representation of the SPCZ in the Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR), which is a three-dimensional atmospheric reconstruction based only on surface observations, is discussed for the period since 1908. The performance of two versions of the 20CR (version 2 and version 2c) in the satellite era is compared with other reanalyses and climate observation products. The 20CR performs well in the satellite era. Extra surface observations spanning the SPCZ region from the longitude of the Cook Islands has improved the representation of the SPCZ during 1908–57 between 20CRv2 and 20CRv2c. The well-established relationship with ENSO is observed in both the representation of mean SPCZ position and intensity, and this relationship remains consistent through the entire 1908–2011 period. This suggests that the ENSO–SPCZ relationship has remained similar over the course of the past century, and gives further evidence that 20CRv2c performs well back to 1908 over the southwest Pacific region.

Classifications of Winter Euro-Atlantic Circulation Patterns: An Intercomparison of Five Atmospheric Reanalyses

Atmospheric reanalyses have been widely used to study large-scale atmospheric circulation and its links to local weather and to validate climate models. Only little effort has so far been made to compare reanalyses over the Euro-Atlantic domain, with the exception of a few studies analyzing North Atlantic cyclones. In particular, studies utilizing automated classifications of circulation patterns—one of the most popular methods in synoptic climatology—have paid little or no attention to the issue of reanalysis evaluation. Here, five reanalyses [ERA-40; NCEP-1; JRA-55; Twentieth Century Reanalysis, version 2 (20CRv2); and ECMWF twentieth-century reanalysis (ERA-20C)] are compared as to the frequency of occurrence of circulation types (CTs) over eight European domains in winters 1961–2000. Eight different classifications are used in parallel with the intention to eliminate possible artifacts of individual classification methods. This also helps document how substantial effect a choice of method can have if one quantifies differences between reanalyses. In general, ERA-40, NCEP-1, and JRA-55 exhibit a fairly small portion of days (under 8%) classified to different CTs if pairs of reanalyses are compared, with two exceptions: over Iceland, NCEP-1 shows disproportionately high frequencies of CTs with cyclones shifted south- and eastward; over the eastern Mediterranean region, ERA-40 and NCEP-1 disagree on classification of about 22% of days. The 20CRv2 is significantly different from other reanalyses over all domains and has a clearly suppressed frequency of zonal CTs. Finally, validation of 32 CMIP5 models over the eastern Mediterranean region reveals that using different reanalyses can considerably alter errors in the CT frequency of models and their rank.

Twentieth-Century Trends in the Annual Cycle of Temperature across the Northern Hemisphere

The annual cycle of surface air temperature is examined across Northern Hemisphere land areas (north of 25°N) by comparing the results from the Climatic Research Unit Time Series (CRU TS) dataset against four reanalysis datasets: two versions of the NOAA Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR and 20CRC) and two versions of the ECMWF Twentieth Century Reanalysis, version 2 (ERA-20C) and version 2c (ERA-20CM). The modulated annual cycle is adaptively derived from an ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) filter, and is used to define the phase and amplitude of the annual cycle. The EEMD method does not impose a simple sinusoidal shape of the annual cycle. None of the reanalysis simulations assimilates surface temperature or land-use data. However, they differ in the parameters that are included: both ERA-20C and 20CR assimilate surface pressure data; ERA-20C also includes surface wind data over the oceans; and ERA-20CM does not assimilate any of these synoptic data. It is demonstrated that synoptic variability is critical for explaining the trends and variability of the annual cycle of surface temperature across the Northern Hemisphere. The CMIP5 forcings alone are insufficient to explain the observed trends and decadal-scale variability, particularly with respect to the decline in the amplitude of the annual cycle throughout the twentieth century. The variability in the annual cycle during the latter half of the twentieth century was unusual in the context of the twentieth century, and was most likely related to large-scale atmospheric variability, although uncertainty in the results is greatest before about 1930.