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Comparisons of Multi‐Year Statistics of Selected Variables From the Coads and the Nimbus‐7 and Ecmwf Data Sets
Author(s) -
Weare Bryan C.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
quarterly journal of the royal meteorological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.744
H-Index - 143
eISSN - 1477-870X
pISSN - 0035-9009
DOI - 10.1002/qj.49711850707
Subject(s) - cloud cover , environmental science , atmospheric sciences , climatology , relative humidity , meteorology , cloud computing , geography , geology , computer science , operating system
Abstract Coarse spatial resolution monthly statistics of selected variables of the Consolidated Ocean‐Atmosphere Data Set (COADS) have been compared with Nimbus‐7 satellite analyses and the European Centre for Medium‐range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) operational analyses. Comparisons are made for the important cloud/climate variables of total cloudiness, surface air temperature and surface relative humidity. to ease these comparisons the COADS variances have been adjusted to account for small numbers of observations, and the COADS temperature and humidity data have been transformed to the 1000 mb level of the ECMWF analyses. The results show that the Nimbus‐7 cloud fractions tend to underestimate total cloudiness for much of the earth, especially in regions of substantial low cloud cover. After account has been made for the different observation heights, the COADS and the ECMWF annual mean temperature statistics are found to be in generally good agreement. However, the annual mean ECMWF relative humidities are significantly lower over large portions of the oceans. The interrelations between the Nimbus‐7 and the COADS total cloudiness and the ECMWF and the COADS lower‐level temperature and relative humidity are compared. Significant regional correlation patterns are evident in all cloud‐surface data pairs. On the other hand, some patterns of correlation using the Nimbus‐7 and the COADS cloud data are quite different, with those of the COADS generally appearing to be the more realistic.