cc: Dick Dee <Dick.Dee@ecmwf.int>
date: Mon Dec 22 10:22:08 2008
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Re: CRUTEM3v and HadCRUH comparisons with ERA-40 and ERA-Interim
to: Adrian.Simmons@ecmwf.int, Kate Willett <kate.willett@metoffice.gov.uk>, Peter <peter.thorne@metoffice.gov.uk>

    Adrian et al,
       Thanks for all the diagrams.  Some quick responses.
    Figs 1-3 for temperature
    The drop off in CRU coverage after 2000 is related to data availability.
    Through WMO, NCDC put together 10-year books which contain
    station data from countries who send this to them (for 2001-2010).
    WMO should be requesting this in early 2011. The last lot of this data
    was for 1991-2000.
    These 10-year books (the last one wasn't a book, but a CD) includes
    more stations than report in near real time. This improves coverage in
    parts of South America, Africa and Southern Asia. It may also help
    in parts of Russia as well (and in the other fUSSR states). We could discuss
    this at AOPC. It could be that we could get some of this sooner, by
    doing calculations with Synops.
    We're getting data directly from Australia now (in addition to what they send
    in via CLIMAT). This may not be getting into the real time updating, so
    coverage here could be improved. For Canada, I can also get some extra data
    by contacting someone. Again it would be best if these two countries could
    be persuaded to put more out each month.
    I'd emphasize the Arctic results - full ERA and CRUTEM3v sampled. I think
    we're underestimating what's happening in the Arctic. I know we are for the
    Arctic Ocean areas, as we're getting summer SSTs in now for areas that don't have
    1961-90 normals, as they always used to be sea ice.
    MOHC will be doing a new global SST analysis - which will correct the 1940s/1950s
    issue that was highlighted in Nature in May 08. This won't affect you, but they
    are also working on issues related to the dramatic increase of drifter-based SSTs
    and slight differences with ships.  This could end up changing the 61-90 SSTs,
    but not the year-to-year anoms in that period. What is probably happening is
    that SSTs are being very slightly underestimated from about 2000 onwards
    relative to the present 61-90 SST normals. The drifters seem to measure SSTs
    in an absolute sense marginally cooler than ships, but 61-90 is currently a ship-based
   normal.
    There might be a version of their new SST analyses by the time of the AOPC in April.
    The Humidity Maps and Time Series
    These look very good. The recent drop in RH could be used by Kate and Peter within
    MOHC as a justification for updating HadCRUH.  It is amazing how good ERA-Interim
    looks compared to HadCRUH over well observed continents like Europe and North America
    and Asia. The others aren't bad either. The reduction in RH looks clear
    over most except for Europe and Africa. Explaining what is happening in
    Figure 6 will be very useful.
    You've got Figure 8 mislabelled - this is all ERA not HadCRUH as coverage is complete.
    I'll continue to look at the plots over the Christmas and New Year break.
    I presume you'll be at the GCOS meeting in Geneva in early February.
    All the best to all for Christmas and New Year!
    Phil
   At 18:38 19/12/2008, Adrian Simmons wrote:

     Dear Phil, Kate and Peter
     I finally managed to spend some time over the past few days assembling
     some provisional figures (attached) for a comparison of our reanalyses
     with your data sets. Era-Interim is now in January 2008, and when it
     completes 2008 (probably late next month or early February), we'll have
     20 years of this reanalysis, and thirty years of combined
     ERA-40/ERA-Interim reanalysis from the FGGE year onwards. My idea is to
     start writing something soon, with a view to finalising the figures and
     text once we have results up to the end of 2008.
     Here are some comments on the figures (all of which are land-only).
     (i) Figs. 1-3 These cover the temperature comparisons, and simply update
     the picture from Simmons, Jones et al. (2004). In these and other
     figures I have normalised everything to give zero anomaly for the
     ten-year mean 1989-1998, which is convenient as I can then plot maps of
     the anomalies for the decades 1979-1988 and 1999-2008. (Note that for
     now the maps labelled 1999-2008 are actually for 1998-2007, and those
     for 2004-2008 are actually for 2003-2007 - this will be fixed when we
     actually have reanalysis data for 2008). For the maps I show all CRU
     grid squares for which less than 5% of months are missing.
     Basically we see excellent continuation of the ERA-40 results when we
     sample ERA-Interim and ERA-40 in the same way as CRUTEM3v samples in
     space and time. A point that might be emphasized is that the coverage of
     CRUTEM3v is much poorer for the last ten years than the first one. Any
     comment on this? Are there many late-arriving CLIMATs that will change
     the picture when I download a new version of CRUTEM3v? It is noteworthy
     that CRUTEM3v samples poorly the Arctic region where ERA indicates the
     strongest warming (and ERA also shows strong warming over sea-ice - or
     where sea-ice used to be!). Fig 1 shows a stronger trend in ERA that in
     CRUTEM3v when we use the complete ERA record rather than sampling it as
     CRUTEM3v. In other words ERA-Interim shows less recent cooling than
     CRUTEM3v. Here we are treading on thin ice (sorry!) from a PR viewpoint,
     so I'm interested in your reaction to all this.
     (ii) Fig. 4 shows excellent agreement between HadCRUH and ERA-40 time
     series for q. After 2003, the "sampled as HadCRUH" means I sample
     ERA-Interim for the grid squares for which HadCRUH gives values for
     December 2003. Slightly less trend for the full ERA dataset.
     (iii) Fig. 5 and 6 are time series for RH. Generally good agreement
     also. Two points. One is shift in ERA-40 around 1990 for Europe. I think
     this is a reanalysis problem. Hard to be sure, but could be explained by
     increased dry bias of sondes. No time to write more now, but Figs 10 and
     11 relate to this, and also to second point - the relative dryness of
     recent years. I cannot find a reanalysis problem to explain this, and am
     inclined to think for now it could be real - there is no fundamental
     physical reason why relative humidity should not show a trend in a
     climate that is shifting. But it is really frustrating that HadCRUH
     stops at the end of 2003. What are the prospects for extending it? Could
     something quick be done as a check on the reanalysis result - omitting
     homogenization and subtle QC checks for example.
     (iv) Fig 7 shows ten-year anomaly maps. Don't have HadCRUH for 1999-2008
     of course. RH map for 1999-2008 show good temporal continuity -
     generally drying (relatively) in tropics and mid latitudes, and
     moistening (relatively) at high latitudes. Perhaps not implausible - for
     RH to stay uniform  as T increases the water has to come from somewhere.
     That could be difficult over dry soils. And easier over melting soils??
     Is anything like this seen in the Hadley Centre climate runs?
     (v) Fig 8 shows consistency across boundary layer (level 49 is close to
     850hPa, where analysis in influenced more strongly by sondes rather than
     SYNOPs).
     (vi) Fig 9 shows some 5-year means, comparing ERA-INT and HadCRUH for
     1999-2003.
     (vii) Figs 10 and 11 are fits of background and analysis to assimilated
     observations. There are subtleties I don't have time to explain right
     now, but basically a flat line is a good thing from the viewpoint of
     trend analysis. It is the drop in the background RH curves and rise in
     the background Q curves for the northern hemisphere between 1988 and
     1993 that makes me think the RH shift between the 1980s and 1990s in ERA
     relative to HadCRUH is a reanalysis problem. Equally though, there is
     nothing in these curves (or some others I've looked at) that points to
     the lowering of RH in the reanalyses for the last few years as being
     spurious.
     I look forward to your reaction to all this.
     And best wishes for Christmas and 2009.
     Adrian
     --
     --------------------------------------------------
     Adrian Simmons
     European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
     Shinfield Park, Reading, RG2 9AX, UK
     Phone: +44 118 949 9700
     Fax:   +44 118 986 9450
     --------------------------------------------------

   Prof. Phil Jones
   Climatic Research Unit        Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
   School of Environmental Sciences    Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
   University of East Anglia
   Norwich                          Email    p.jones@uea.ac.uk
   NR4 7TJ
   UK
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