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Relationships of upper tropospheric water vapor, clouds and SST: MLS observations, ECMWF analyses and GCM simulations
Author(s) -
Su Hui,
Waliser Duane E.,
Jiang Jonathan H.,
Li Juilin,
Read William G.,
Waters Joe W.,
Tompkins Adrian M.
Publication year - 2006
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 - 10.1029/2006gl027582
Subject(s) - troposphere , climatology , water vapor , environmental science , sea surface temperature , atmospheric sciences , ice cloud , sea ice , atmosphere (unit) , cloud computing , geology , meteorology , physics , computer science , operating system
The relationships of upper tropospheric water vapor (UTWV), cloud ice and sea surface temperature (SST) are examined in the annual cycles of ECMWF analyses and simulations from 15 atmosphere‐ocean coupled models which were contributed to the IPCC AR4. The results are compared with the observed relationships based on UTWV and cloud ice measurements from MLS on Aura. It is shown that the ECMWF analyses produce positive correlations between UTWV, cloud ice and SST, similar to the MLS data. The rate of the increase of cloud ice and UTWV with SST is about 30% larger than that for MLS. For the IPCC simulations, the relationships between UTWV, cloud ice and SST are qualitatively captured. However, the magnitudes of the simulated cloud ice show a considerable disagreement between models, by nearly a factor of 10. The amplitudes of the approximate linear relations between UTWV, cloud ice and SST vary by a factor up to 4.