A National Program for Analysis of the Climate System
American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2002
Article 2002 English
Authors
SS
Siegfried D. Schubert
PA
Phillip A. Arkin
EK
Eugenia Kalnay
Abstract
1 min read
Perhaps the single greatest roadblock to fundamental advances in our understanding of climate variability and climate change is the lack of robust and unbiased long-term global observations of the climate system. Such observations are critical for the identification and diagnosis of climate variations, and provide the constraints necessary for developing and validating climate models. The first generation of reanalysis efforts, by using fixed analysis systems, eliminated the artificial climate signals that occurred in analyses generated at the operational numerical weather prediction centers. These datasets are now widely used by the scientific community in a variety of applications including atmosphere-ocean interactions, seasonal prediction, climate monitoring, the hydrological cycle, and a host of regional and other diagnostic studies. These reanalyses, however, had problems that made them sub-optimal or even unusable for some applications. Perhaps the most serious problem for climate applications was that, while the assimilation system remained fixed, changes in the observing systems did produce spurious changes in the perceived climate. The first generation reanalysis products also exposed problems with physical consistency of the products and the accurate representation of physical processes in the climate system. Examples are bias in the estimates of ocean surface fluxes, and inadequate representation of polar hydrology. In this talk, I will describe some initial plans for a national program on reananlysis. The program is envisioned to be part of an on-going activity to maintain, improve, and reprocess our record of climate observations. I will discuss various issues affecting the quality of reanalyses, with a special focus on those relevant to the ocean.
Michael G. Bosilovich, M. Rixen, P.J. van Oevelen, Ghassem Asrar, Gilbert P. Compo, Kazutoshi Onogi, A. J. Simmons, Kevin E Trenberth, Dave Behringer, Tanvir Bhuiyan, Shannon L. Capps, Ayan H. Chaudhuri, Junye Chen, Linling Chen, Nicole Colasacco-Thumm, Maria Gabriela Escobar, Craig R. Ferguson, Toshiyuki Ishibashi, Margarida L. R. Liberato, Jesse Meng, Andrea Molod, Paul Poli, Joshua K. Roundy, Kate M. Willett, Jack Wollen
Michael G. Bosilovich, M. Rixen, P.J. van Oevelen, Ghassem Asrar, Gilbert P. Compo, Kazutoshi Onogi, A. J. Simmons, Kevin E Trenberth, Dave Behringer, Tanvir Bhuiyan, Shannon L. Capps, Ayan H. Chaudhuri, Junye Chen, Linling Chen, Nicole Colasacco-Thumm, Maria Gabriela Escobar, Craig R. Ferguson, Toshiyuki Ishibashi, Margarida L. R. Liberato, Jesse Meng, Andrea Molod, Paul Poli, Joshua K. Roundy, Kate M. Willett,
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