The thermodynamic influence of subgrid orography in a global climate model     

S. Ghan  X. Bian  A. Hunt  A. Coleman 《Climate Dynamics》2002,20(1):31-44

Assessments of the impacts of climate change typically require information at scales of 10 km or less. Such a resolution in global climate simulations is unlikely for at least two decades. We have developed an alternative to explicit resolution that provides a framework for meeting the needs of climate change impact assessment much sooner. We have applied to a global climate model a physically based subgrid-scale treatment of the influence of orography on temperature, clouds, precipitation, and land surface hydrology. The treatment represents subgrid variations in surface elevation in terms of fractional area distributions of discrete elevation classes. For each class it calculates the height rise/descent of air parcels traveling through the grid cell, and applies the influence of the rise/descent to the temperature and humidity profiles of the elevation class. Cloud, radiative, and surface processes are calculated separately for each elevation class using the same physical parametrizations used by the model without the subgrid orography parametrization. The simulated climate fields for each elevation class can then be distributed in post-processing according to the spatial distribution of surface elevation within each grid cell. Parallel 10-year simulations with and without the subgrid treatment have been performed. The simulated temperature, precipitation and snow water are mapped to 2.5-minute (~5 km) resolution and compared with gridded analyses of station measurements. The simulation with the subgrid scheme produces a much more realistic distribution of snow water and significantly more realistic distributions of temperature and precipitation than the simulation without the subgrid scheme. Moreover, the 250-km grid cell means of most other fields are virtually unchanged by the subgrid scheme. This suggests that the tuning of the climate model without the subgrid scheme is also applicable to the model with the scheme.  相似文献   

Does the NAO index represent zonal flow? The influence of the NAO on North Atlantic surface temperature     

V. Slonosky  P. Yiou 《Climate Dynamics》2002,19(1):17-30

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Editorial: The LITFASS-98 experiment     

F. Beyrich  T. Foken  H.-J. Herzog 《Theoretical and Applied Climatology》2002,73(1-2):1-2

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Reconstruction of sea level pressure fields over the Eastern North Atlantic and Europe back to 1500   总被引：3，自引：7，他引：3  

J. Luterbacher  E. Xoplaki  D. Dietrich  R. Rickli  J. Jacobeit  C. Beck  D. Gyalistras  C. Schmutz  H. Wanner 《Climate Dynamics》2002,18(7):545-561

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On the separability of the North Atlantic oscillation and Arctic oscillation   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

J. Rogers  M. McHugh 《Climate Dynamics》2002,19(7):599-608

We address the issue of whether the Arctic (AO), and North Atlantic oscillations (NAO) are inseparable, forming an annular mode in the Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation. This annular mode is the leading empirical orthogonal function of hemispheric sea level pressure (SLP) data, explaining the largest amount of its variability. We examine whether the NAO and AO are inseparable spatial modes of the atmospheric circulation using rotated principal component analysis (RPCA), a methodology that identifies simple and unique patterns of spatial dataset variability. RPCA of the spring, summer, and autumn SLP fields from 1946-1998 reveal NAO and AO-like patterns, occurring as separate regional teleconnections forming the first and second principal components respectively. The RPCA-based NAO dipole pattern is like that observed in many prior studies, while the AO-like pattern exhibits high SLP variability over the Kara and Laptev seas. During winter however, and in annual analyses, a distinct AO-like pattern is not obtained and the two patterns may be inseparable using commonly accepted RPCA methods. The RPCA-based AO-like mode is significantly linked to north-central Siberian seasonal air temperatures and to the prevailing direction of motion of the underlying Arctic Ocean in summer, suggesting that the non-winter AO-like pattern, as a stand alone teleconnection separate from the NAO, contributes significantly to high-latitude climate and ocean variability. The winter NAO/AO inseparability is discussed as a possible effect of a shared winter storm track between the northeastern Atlantic and the Arctic.  相似文献   

Mean flow-transient perturbation interaction in the Southern Hemisphere: a simulation using a variable-resolution GCM     

A. Carril  C. Menéndez  M. Nuñez  H. Le Treut 《Climate Dynamics》2002,18(8):661-673

The ability of an atmospheric general circulation model to reproduce fundamental features of the wintertime extratropical Southern Hemisphere (SH) circulation is evaluated with emphasis on the daily variability of the SH mean flow and the mean flow-transient perturbations interaction. Two 10-year simulations using a new version of the LMDZ GCM with a stretched grid scheme centered at 45 °S and forced by climatological SST are performed: a high (144Ꮡ) and low (64Ꭹ) horizontal resolution runs. The performance of both simulations was determined by comparing several simulated fields (zonal wind, temperature, kinetic energy, transient eddy momentum and heat fluxes, Eliassen-Palm fluxes, Eady growth rate and baroclinic conversion term) against the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast reanalyses (ERA). High and low-resolution simulations are similar in many respects; in particular, both experiments reproduce the main patterns of the southern extratropical large-scale circulation satisfactorily. Increasing resolution does not improve universally some spurious aspects of the low resolution simulation (e.g. the cold bias in the high polar troposphere, the debilitated subtropical jet, the low baroclinic conversion rate). Those aspects present little sensitivity to the model resolution. The interaction between transient eddies and zonal mean flow are examined. The low-resolution experiment is able to qualitatively represent the acceleration/deceleration of the mean flow by transient perturbations, south/north of 30 °S with an accuracy similar to that of the high-resolution experiment. Although both experiments represent the baroclinic structure of the mean flow satisfactorily, the model underestimates some transient properties due to the underestimation of the baroclinic conversion term in middle latitudes. Such misrepresentation does not improve with increasing resolution and is related to the relatively weak meridional temperature gradient and the inadequate geographical distribution of the eddy heat fluxes. In particular, the eddy kinetic energy is always underestimated. Eddy kinetic energy does not improve convincingly with increasing resolution, suggesting that the adequate representation of the storm tracks is highly influenced by the physical parametrizations.  相似文献   

An algorithm for determination of aerosol opticalthickness from AVHRR imagery over oceans     

F. Zhao  Y. Li  C. Dong  N. Lu 《Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics》2002,80(1-4):73-88

Summary The uncertainty in aerosol size distributions is a main source of errors in aerosol optical thickness determined from satellite measurements. To reduce the errors resulting from the uncertainty in aerosol size distributions, we have performed sensitivity analyses. It is found the errors resulting from the uncertainty in aerosol size distribution can be considerably reduced by using the Junge power law to approximate the aerosol size distribution in an actual atmosphere, if the exponent value is determined at the same time. An iterative algorithm is then developed for the simultaneous determination of aerosol optical thickness and the exponent of the Junge power law over ocean areas from the upwelling radiances measured in AVHRR visible and near infrared channels. A number of numerical experiments are carried out to investigate the validity of the Junge power law approximation by assuming the aerosol size distributions in an actual atmosphere are bimodal with different mode parameters, and by using the actual aerosol size distributions determined at several places by Kaufman et al. (1994). The results show that the errors in determined aerosol optical thickness resulting from the Junge power law approach are significantly reduced. The iterative algorithm is investigated further by comparing the aerosol optical thickness deduced from satellite measurement with that observed by a sun photometer. Received October 10, 2001 Revised December 28, 2001  相似文献   

Insolation estimates for the LITFASS area derived from high resolution satellite data     

C. Podlasly  F. H. Berger 《Theoretical and Applied Climatology》2002,73(1-2):87-95

Summary ?For the LITFASS-98 experiment, from June 1 until June 30, 1998, the spatially resolved insolation at surface could be computed from NOAA-14 AVHRR data applying the modular analysis scheme SESAT (Strahlungs- und Energiebilanzen aus Satellitendaten). The satellite inferred insolation for this period shows for clear-sky regions a good agreement with surface based observations with a rms error of 76 Wm⁻². For cloudy conditions the insolation is overestimated with respect to ground based observations, with a rms error between 83 and 118 Wm⁻², depending on the cloud optical thickness. This overestimation can be explained by the surface heterogeneity, leading to underestimated cloud optical thickness, and also by a fixed relative humidity below clouds (55%, dry atmosphere) and a fixed horizontal visibility (50 km, clear atmosphere). A detailed study of comparable scales in space and time, considering the different observation geometries and sampling intervals, shows that a 30 min ground based observation can be compared with a 8 × 8 km² mean by the satellite data. Received July 12, 2001; revised April 29, 2002; accepted June 7, 2002  相似文献   

Using Remote Sensing to Assess Russian Forest Fire Carbon Emissions   总被引：7，自引：0，他引：7  

A. S. Isaev  G. N. Korovin  S. A. Bartalev  D. V. Ershov  A. Janetos  E. S. Kasischke  H. H. Shugart  N. H. F. French  B. E. Orlick  T. L. Murphy 《Climatic change》2002,55(1-2):235-249

Russian boreal forests are subject to frequent wildfires. The resulting combustion of large amounts of biomass not only transforms forest vegetation, but it also creates significant carbon emissions that total, according to some authors, from 35–94 Mt C per year. These carbon emissions from forest fires should be considered an important part of the forest ecosystem carbon balance and a significant influence on atmospheric trace gases. In this paper we discuss a new method to assess forest fire damage. This method is based on using multi-spectral high-resolution satellite images, large-scale aerial photography, and declassified images obtained from the space-borne national security systems. A normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) difference image was produced from pre- and post-fire satellite images from SPOT/HRVIR and RESURS-O/MSU-E images. A close relationship was found between values of the NDVI difference image and forest damage level. High-resolution satellite data and large-scale aerial-photos were used to calibrate the NDVI-derived forest damage map. The method was used for mapping of forest fire extent and damage and for estimating carbon emissions from burned forest areas.  相似文献   

Wind statistics for coastal stations in Cyprus     

C. P. Jacovides  C. Theophilou  F. S. Tymvios  S. Pashiardes 《Theoretical and Applied Climatology》2002,72(3-4):259-263

Summary ?A statistical analysis of wind speed and direction data for five selected meteorological stations at the Cyprus coast, is carried out in this study. Daily, monthly and annual variations of wind speed are established. The Weibull distribution statistics of the sites are also determined. In addition, an attempt is made to find the sea-breeze circulation effects in the same wind data. The wind statistics obtained are expected to serve as a validation test for wind energy applications, mainly along the southeastern coastline. Received April 5, 2001; revised February 13, 2002; accepted March 3, 2002  相似文献