An Assessment of ERA5 Reanalysis for Antarctic Near-Surface Air Temperature

Atmosphere

Yetang Wang¹  Yicheng Wang²  Xiang Qin³  Bing Xu³  Jiangping Zhu³  Aihong Xie³ 

[1] College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, China;Lanzhou Central Meteorological Observatory, Lanzhou 730000, China;State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China;

关键词: ERA5;    ERA-Interim;    Antarctica;    air temperature;    in situ observations;   

DOI  :  10.3390/atmos12020217

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) released its latest reanalysis dataset named ERA5 in 2017. To assess the performance of ERA5 in Antarctica, we compare the near-surface temperature data from ERA5 and ERA-Interim with the measured data from 41 weather stations. ERA5 has a strong linear relationship with monthly observations, and the statistical significant correlation coefficients (p < 0.05) are higher than 0.95 at all stations selected. The performance of ERA5 shows regional differences, and the correlations are high in West Antarctica and low in East Antarctica. Compared with ERA5, ERA-Interim has a slightly higher linear relationship with observations in the Antarctic Peninsula. ERA5 agrees well with the temperature observations in austral spring, with significant correlation coefficients higher than 0.90 and bias lower than 0.70 °C. The temperature trend from ERA5 is consistent with that from observations, in which a cooling trend dominates East Antarctica and West Antarctica, while a warming trend exists in the Antarctic Peninsula except during austral summer. Generally, ERA5 can effectively represent the temperature changes in Antarctica and its three subregions. Although ERA5 has bias, ERA5 can play an important role as a powerful tool to explore the climate change in Antarctica with sparse in situ observations.

【 授权许可】

Unknown