Comparison of co-located independent ground-based middle atmospheric wind and temperature measurements with numerical weather prediction modelsLe Pichon, A., Assink, J. D., Heinrich, P., Blanc, E., Charlton-Perez, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8179-6220, Lee, C. F., Keckhut, P., Hauchecorne, A., Rüfenacht, R., Kämpfer, N., Drob, D. P., Smets, P. S. M., Evers, L. G., Ceranna, L., Pilger, C., Ross, O. and Claud, C. (2015) Comparison of co-located independent ground-based middle atmospheric wind and temperature measurements with numerical weather prediction models. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 120 (16). pp. 8318-8331. ISSN 2169-8996
It is advisable to refer to the publisher's version if you intend to cite from this work. See Guidance on citing. To link to this item DOI: 10.1002/2015JD023273 Abstract/SummaryHigh-resolution, ground-based and independent observations including co-located windradiometer, lidar stations, and infrasound instruments are used to evaluate the accuracy of general circulationmodels and data-constrained assimilation systems in the middle atmosphere at northern hemispheremidlatitudes. Systematic comparisons between observations, the European Centre for Medium-Range WeatherForecasts (ECMWF) operational analyses including the recent Integrated Forecast System cycles 38r1 and 38r2,the NASA’s Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) reanalyses, and thefree-running climate Max Planck Institute–Earth System Model–Low Resolution (MPI-ESM-LR) are carried out inboth temporal and spectral dom ains. We find that ECMWF and MERRA are broadly consistent with lidar and windradiometer measurements up to ~40 km. For both temperature and horizontal wind components, deviationsincrease with altitude as the assimilated observations become sparser. Between 40 and 60 km altitude, thestandard deviation of the mean difference exceeds 5 K for the temperature and 20 m/s for the zonal wind. Thelargest deviations are observed in winter when the variability from large-scale planetary waves dominates.Between lidar data and MPI-ESM-LR, there is an overall agreement in spectral amplitude down to 15–20 days. Atshorter time scales, the variability is lacking in the model by ~10 dB. Infrasound observations indicate a generalgood agreement with ECWMF wind and temperature products. As such, this study demonstrates the potentialof the infrastructure of the Atmospheric Dynamics Research Infrastructure in Europe project that integratesvarious measurements and provides a quantitative understanding of stratosphere-troposphere dynamicalcoupling for numerical weather prediction applications.
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