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Benchmarking Northern Hemisphere midlatitude atmospheric synoptic variability in centennial reanalysis and numerical simulations
Author(s) -
Dell'Aquila Alessandro,
Corti Susanna,
Weisheimer Antje,
Hersbach Hans,
Peubey Carol,
Poli Paul,
Berrisford Paul,
Dee Dick,
Simmons Adrian
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2016gl068829
Subject(s) - middle latitudes , extratropical cyclone , climatology , centennial , environmental science , northern hemisphere , atmospheric sciences , data assimilation , meteorology , geology , geography , archaeology
Abstract The representation of midlatitude winter atmospheric synoptic variability in centennial reanalysis products, which assimilate surface observations only, and atmospheric model simulations constrained by observation‐based data sets is assessed. Midlatitude waves activity in twentieth century reanalyses (20CR, ERA‐20C) and atmospheric model simulations are compared with those estimated from observationally complete reanalysis products. All reanalyses are in good agreement regarding the representation of the synoptic variability during the last decades of the twentieth century. This suggests that the assimilation of surface observations can generate high‐quality extratropical upper air fields. In the first decades of the twentieth century a suppression of high‐frequency variability is apparent in the centennial reanalysis products. This behavior does not have a counterpart in the atmospheric model integrations. Since the latter differ from one of the reanalysis products considered here (ERA‐20C) only in the assimilation of surface observations, it seems reasonable to attribute the high‐frequency variability suppression to the poor coverage of the observations assimilated.