edu.ucar.opensky::articles:17594 UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact 2025-12-26T16:15:16.874923 ISO 19115-2 Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data ISO 19115-2:2009(E) https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d73b61gg Quality of reanalyses in the tropics 2001-04-01T00:00:00Z publication https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d73b61gg Trenberth, K. author Stepaniak, D. author Hurrell, J. author Fiorino, M. author UCAR/NCAR - Library publisher Broad vertical layer-averaged temperatures from the microwave sounder unit (MSU) are used as a quasi-independent validation of temperature fields from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction-National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP-NCAR) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalyses. While the MSU and NCEP-NCAR temperatures show fairly good agreement overall, large discrepancies with ECMWF temperatures indicate that changes in the satellite observing system may have adversely affected the ECMWF reanalyses, especially in the Tropics. Two spurious discontinuities are present in tropical temperatures with jumps to warmer values throughout the Tropics below 500 mb in late 1986 and early 1989, and further spurious interannual variability is also present. These features are also reflected in the specific humidity fields. The temperature discrepancies have a complex vertical structure with height that is not fully understood, although it seems that the problems partly arise from positive reinforcement of biases in satellite radiances with those of the assimilating model first guess. Changes in the observing system provide a limit to the usefulness of the reanalyses in some climate studies. UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact PDF Text theme Resource Type 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z publication Copyright 2001 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC ยง108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license form the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (http://www.ametsoc.org/AMS) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or copyright@ametsoc.org. None eng geoscientificInformation