ERA‐40 is a re‐analysis of meteorological observations from September 1957 to August 2002 produced by the European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in collaboration with many institutions. The observing system changed considerably over this re‐analysis period, with assimilable data provided by a succession of satellite‐borne instruments from the 1970s onwards, supplemented by increasing numbers of observations from aircraft, ocean‐buoys and other surface platforms, but with a declining number of radiosonde ascents since the late 1980s. The observations used in ERA‐40 were accumulated from many sources. The first part of this paper describes the data acquisition and the principal changes in data type and coverage over the period. It also describes the data assimilation system used for ERA‐40. This benefited from many of the changes introduced into operational forecasting since the mid‐1990s, when the systems used for the 15‐year ECMWF re‐analysis (ERA‐15) and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) re‐analysis were implemented. Several of the improvements are discussed. General aspects of the production of the analyses are also summarized. A number of results indicative of the overall performance of the data assimilation system, and implicitly of the observing system, are presented and discussed. The comparison of background (short‐range) forecasts and analyses with observations, the consistency of the global mass budget, the magnitude of differences between analysis and background fields and the accuracy of medium‐range forecasts run from the ERA‐40 analyses are illustrated. Several results demonstrate the marked improvement that was made to the observing system for the southern hemisphere in the 1970s, particularly towards the end of the decade. In contrast, the synoptic quality of the analysis for the northern hemisphere is sufficient to provide forecasts that remain skilful well into the medium range for all years. Two particular problems are also examined: excessive precipitation over tropical oceans and a too strong Brewer‐Dobson circulation, both of which are pronounced in later years. Several other aspects of the quality of the re‐analyses revealed by monitoring and validation studies are summarized. Expectations that the ‘second‐generation’ ERA‐40 re‐analysis would provide products that are better than those from the firstgeneration ERA‐15 and NCEP/NCAR re‐analyses are found to have been met in most cases. © Royal Meteorological Society, 2005. The contributions of N. A. Rayner and R. W. Saunders are Crown copyright.
An evaluation is carried out of the moisture fields, the precipitation P and evaporation E, and the moisture transport and divergence in the atmosph
There is a substantial global redistribution of atmospheric mass associated with the mean annual cycle which results in large exchanges of mass between hemispheres. Interannual fluctuations in the distribution of mass both within each hemisphere and for the “hemispheric” mean over 17.5°–90° latitude are examined. The long‐period (1899–1980) historical sea level pressures over the northern hemisphere are analyzed and found to exhibit three modes of interannual zonal mean mass redistribution that are common to all seasons. The first is one where mass is mostly redistributed within the hemisphere, while the other two modes imply that compensation of mass occurs south of 17.5°N. A similar analysis over the southern hemisphere for 1972–1983 reveals remarkably similar results. Large and significant fluctuations in the hemispheric mean sea level pressure are found. These include record anomalies during the northern spring and summer of 1979, the year of the Global Weather Experiment. Opposite anomalies in the southern hemisphere, through the constraint of conservation of mass, imply the reality of a substantial global‐scale redistribution of atmospheric mass.
To explore the vertical coherence of the vertical temperature structure in the atmosphere, an analysis is performed of the full three-dimensional spatial structure of the temperature field monthly mean anomalies from the 40-yr ECMWF Re-Analysis (ERA-40) for a core region of the Tropics from 30°N to 30°S, with results projected globally. The focus is on the first three empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs), two of which have primary relationships to El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and feature rather different vertical structures. The second (EOF-2) also has a weak ENSO signature but a very complex vertical structure and reflects mainly nonlinear trends, some real but also some in large part spurious and associated with problems in assimilating satellite data. The dominant pattern (EOF-1) in its positive sign features highly coherent zonal mean warming throughout the tropical troposphere from 30°N to 30°S that increases in magnitude with height to 300 hPa, drops to zero about 100 hPa at the tropopause, and has reverse sign to 30 hPa with peak negative values at 70 hPa. Spatially at low levels it shows warmth throughout most of the Tropics although with weak or slightly opposite sign in the western tropical Pacific and a strong reversed sign in the Pacific subtropics. Coherent wave structures below 700 hPa at higher latitudes cancel out in the zonal mean. However, the structure becomes more zonal above about 700 hPa and features off-equatorial maxima straddling the equator in the eastern Pacific in the upper troposphere with opposite sign at 100 hPa, as a signature of a forced Rossby wave. The corresponding sea level pressure pattern is similar to but more focused in equatorial regions than the Southern Oscillation pattern. The time series highlights the 1997/98 El Niño along with those in 1982/83 and 1986/87, and the 1988/89 La Niña, and correlates strongly with global mean surface temperatures. Missing, however, is the prolonged sequence of three successive El Niño events in the early 1990s, which are highlighted in EOF-3 as part of a mainly lower-frequency decadal variation that features modest zonal mean warming below 700 hPa, cooling from 700 to 300 hPa, and warming above 300 hPa, peaking at 100 hPa and extending from 40°N to 50°S. Spatially at the surface this pattern is dominated by Southern Oscillation wave-1 structures throughout the Tropics and especially the subtropics. The regional temperature structures are coherent throughout the troposphere, with strongest values in the Pacific and extending well into the extratropics, with a sign reversal at and above 100 hPa. Strong Rossby wave signatures are featured in the troposphere with a distinctive quadrupole pattern that reverses at 100 hPa. The vertical coherence of all patterns suggests that they should be apparent in broad-layer satellite temperature records but that stratospheric anomalies are not independent. The quite different three-dimensional structure of these different patterns highlights the need to consider the full structure outside of the Pacific and at all vertical levels in accounting for impacts of ENSO, and how they relate to the global mean.
El verano de 2004 fue un clarinazo de alarma: cuatro huracanes descomunales arrasaron Florida y diez tifones azotaron las tierras de Japon, cuatro mas que los padecidos en el ano anterior. Los cientificos, asombrados, no se ponian de acuerdo en la explicacion del fenomeno, especialmente en cuanto al papel del calentamiento global en tan inusitado aumento. Despues vino la estacion de 2005, que batio marcas en el Atlantico Norte con los devastadores huracanes Katrina y Rita. Pero en 2006, tras un fuerte aumento de las primas de seguro en el sudeste de EE.UU., el numero de tormentas fue bastante menor de lo previsto. Si el calentamiento global era determinante, ?por que este subito descenso? El estudio minucioso de las pautas del clima esta alcanzando una explicacion consensuada de los crecimientos espectaculares de 2004 y 2005, asi como del apaciguado 2006. Por desgracia, pronostica tambien problemas meteorologicos a largo plazo.
Studies of the interannual variability of the 500 mb flow in the Southern Hemisphere for 1972–78 have revealed 1) a quasi-biennial fluctuation in the zonal mean geopotential height and westerly wind fields where there is a systematic poleward progression of anomalies, and 2) a longer period fluctuation, primarily in Wave 1, which has been identified with the Southern Oscillation. These phenomena are further studied regionally by considering four 90° sectors. Results show the dominant contributions to the fluctuations in the zonal mean fields come from the Australasian and South Pacific sectors. Only in the Australasian region is the quasi-biennial poleward progression of anomalies strongly evident. The South Pacific is dominated by lower frequency fluctuations associated with the Southern Oscillation. However, the sequences in all four sectors are correlated with those in the zonal mean fields. When the flow is stronger than normal in mid-latitudes it tends to be weaker than normal in low and high latitudes, and vice versa, in all sectors and in the zonal mean.
Climate change is likely to be manifested on societies around the world mainly through changes in extremes. As a result, the scientific community faces an increasing demand for regularly updated appraisals of evolving climate conditions and extreme weather. Such information would be immensely beneficial for adaptation planning. A group of climate scientists representing the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, and South Africa assembled on 26 January 2009 at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in Colorado, to discuss how to meet this challenge. This first meeting of the International Group on Attribution of Climate‐Related Events (ACE) was sponsored by the Science and Innovation Network of the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and NCAR and was organized in collaboration with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Met Office Hadley Centre, and the University of Oxford.
No abstract is provided for this article.
The primary focus of this review is tropical‐extratropical interactions and especially the issues involved in determining the response of the extratropical atmosphere to tropical forcing associated with sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies. The review encompasses observations, empirical studies, theory and modeling of the extratropical teleconnections with a focus on developments over the Tropical Oceans‐Global Atmosphere (TOGA) decade and the current state of understanding. In the tropical atmosphere, anomalous SSTs force anomalies in convection and large‐scale overturning with subsidence in the descending branch of the local Hadley circulation. The resulting strong upper tropospheric divergence in the tropics and convergence in the subtropics act as a Rossby wave source. The climatological stationary planetary waves and associated jet streams, especially in the northern hemisphere, can make the total Rossby wave sources somewhat insensitive to the position of the tropical heating that induces them and thus can create preferred teleconnection response patterns, such as the Pacific‐North American (PNA) pattern. However, a number of factors influence the dispersion and propagation of Rossby waves through the atmosphere, including zonal asymmetries in the climatological state, transients, and baroclinic and nonlinear effects. Internal midlatitude sources can amplify perturbations. Observations, modeling, and theory have clearly shown how storm tracks change in response to changes in quasi‐stationary waves and how these changes generally feedback to maintain or strengthen the dominant perturbations through vorticity and momentum transports. The response of the extratropical atmosphere naturally induces changes in the underlying surface, so that there are changes in extratropical SSTs and changes in land surface hydrology and moisture availability that can feedback and influence the total response. Land surface processes are believed to be especially important in spring and summer. Anomalous SSTs and tropical forcing have tended to be strongest in the northern winter, and teleconnections in the southern hemisphere are weaker and more variable and thus more inclined to be masked by natural variability. Occasional strong forcing in seasons other than winter can produce strong and identifiable signals in the northern hemisphere and, because the noise of natural variability is less, the signal‐to‐noise ratio can be large. The relative importance of tropical versus extratropical SST forcings has been established through numerical experiments with atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs). Predictability of anomalous circulation and associated surface temperature and precipitation in the extratropics is somewhat limited by the difficulty of finding a modest signal embedded in the high level of noise from natural variability in the extratropics, and the complexity and variety of the possible feedbacks. Accordingly, ensembles of AGCM runs and time averaging are needed to identify signals and make predictions. Strong anomalous tropical forcing provides opportunities for skillful forecasts, and the accuracy and usefulness of forecasts is expected to improve as the ability to forecast the anomalous SSTs improves, as models improve, and as the information available from the mean and the spread of ensemble forecasts is better utilized.
No abstract is provided for this article.
There is a tremendous desire to attribute causes to weather and climate events that is often challenging from a physical standpoint. Headlines attributing an event solely to either human-induced climate change or natural variability can be misleading when both are invariably in play. The conventional attribution framework struggles with dynamically driven extremes because of the small signal-to-noise ratios and often uncertain nature of the forced changes. Here, we suggest that a different framing is desirable, which asks why such extremes unfold the way they do. Specifically, we suggest that it is more useful to regard the extreme circulation regime or weather event as being largely unaffected by climate change, and question whether known changes in the climate system's thermodynamic state affected the impact of the particular event. Some examples briefly illustrated include 'snowmaggedon' in February 2010, superstorm Sandy in October 2012 and supertyphoon Haiyan in November 2013, and, in more detail, the Boulder floods of September 2013, all of which were influenced by high sea surface temperatures that had a discernible human component.
During 2009–2011, Colombia experienced extreme hydroclimatic events associated with the extreme phases of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (EN
To characterize the nature of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in different regions of the Pacific have been used. An optimal characterization of both the distinct character and the evolution of each El Niño or La Niña event is suggested that requires at least two indices: (i) SST anomalies in the Niño-3.4 region (referred to as N3.4), and (ii) a new index termed here the Trans-Niño Index (TNI), which is given by the difference in normalized anomalies of SST between Niño-1+2 and Niño-4 regions. The first index can be thought of as the mean SST throughout the equatorial Pacific east of the date line and the second index is the gradient in SST across the same region. Consequently, they are approximately orthogonal. TNI leads N3.4 by 3 to 12 months prior to the climate shift in 1976/77 and also follows N3.4 but with opposite sign 3 to 12 months later. However, after 1976/77, the sign of the TNI leads and lags are reversed.
