Drafting Authors: Neil Adger, Pramod Aggarwal, Shardul Agrawala, Joseph Alcamo, Abdelkader Allali, Oleg Anisimov, Nigel Arnell, Michel Boko, Osvaldo Canziani, Timothy Carter, Gino Casassa, Ulisses Confalonieri, Rex Victor Cruz, Edmundo de Alba Alcaraz, William Easterling, Christopher Field, Andreas Fischlin, Blair Fitzharris, Carlos Gay García, Clair Hanson, Hideo Harasawa, Kevin Hennessy, Saleemul Huq, Roger Jones, Lucka Kajfež Bogataj, David Karoly, Richard Klein, Zbigniew Kundzewicz, Murari Lal, Rodel Lasco, Geoff Love, Xianfu Lu, Graciela Magrín, Luis José Mata, Roger McLean, Bettina Menne, Guy Midgley, Nobuo Mimura, Monirul Qader Mirza, José Moreno, Linda Mortsch, Isabelle Niang-Diop, Robert Nicholls, Béla Nováky, Leonard Nurse, Anthony Nyong, Michael Oppenheimer, Jean Palutikof, Martin Parry, Anand Patwardhan, Patricia Romero Lankao, Cynthia Rosenzweig, Stephen Schneider, Serguei Semenov, Joel Smith, John Stone, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, David Vaughan, Coleen Vogel, Thomas Wilbanks, Poh Poh Wong, Shaohong Wu, Gary Yohe

Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

ERA-40 is a re-analysis of meteorological observations from September 1957 to August 2002 produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in collaboration with many institutions. The observing system changed considerably over this re-analysis period, with assimilable data provided by a succession of satellite-borne instruments from the 1970s onwards, supplemented by increasing numbers of observations from aircraft, ocean-buoys and other surface platforms, but with a declining number of radiosonde ascents since the late 1980s. The observations used in ERA-40 were accumulated from many sources. The first part of this paper describes the data acquisition and the principal changes in data type and coverage over the period. It also describes the data assimilation system used for ERA-40. This benefited from many of the changes introduced into operational forecasting since the mid-1990s, when the systems used for the 15-year ECMWF re-analysis (ERA-15) and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) re-analysis were implemented. Several of the improvements are discussed. General aspects of the production of the analyses are also summarized.

A number of results indicative of the overall performance of the data assimilation system, and implicitly of the observing system, are presented and discussed. The comparison of background (short-range) forecasts and analyses with observations, the consistency of the global mass budget, the magnitude of differences between analysis and background fields and the accuracy of medium-range forecasts run from the ERA-40 analyses are illustrated. Several results demonstrate the marked improvement that was made to the observing system for the southern hemisphere in the 1970s, particularly towards the end of the decade. In contrast, the synoptic quality of the analysis for the northern hemisphere is sufficient to provide forecasts that remain skilful well into the medium range for all years. Two particular problems are also examined: excessive precipitation over tropical oceans and a too strong Brewer-Dobson circulation, both of which are pronounced in later years. Several other aspects of the quality of the re-analyses revealed by monitoring and validation studies are summarized. Expectations that the ‘second-generation’ ERA-40 re-analysis would provide products that are better than those from the firstgeneration ERA-15 and NCEP/NCAR re-analyses are found to have been met in most cases. © Royal Meteorological Society, 2005. The contributions of N. A. Rayner and R. W. Saunders are Crown copyright.

The ERA‐40 re‐analysis

A diagram has been devised that can provide a concise statistical summary of how well patterns match each other in terms of their correlation, their root-mean-square difference, and the ratio of their variances. Although the form of this diagram is general, it is especially useful in evaluating complex models, such as those used to study geophysical phenomena. Examples are given showing that the diagram can be used to summarize the relative merits of a collection of different models or to track changes in performance of a model as it is modified. Methods are suggested for indicating on these diagrams the statistical significance of apparent differences and the degree to which observational uncertainty and unforced internal variability limit the expected agreement between model-simulated and observed behaviors. The geometric relationship between the statistics plotted on the diagram also provides some guidance for devising skill scores that appropriately weight among the various measures of pattern correspondence.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2000JD900719

Summarizing multiple aspects of model performance in a single diagram

The NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) was completed for the 31-yr period from 1979 to 2009, in January 2010. The CFSR was designed and executed as a global, high-resolution coupled atmosphere–ocean–land surface–sea ice system to provide the best estimate of the state of these coupled domains over this period. The current CFSR will be extended as an operational, real-time product into the future. New features of the CFSR include 1) coupling of the atmosphere and ocean during the generation of the 6-h guess field, 2) an interactive sea ice model, and 3) assimilation of satellite radiances by the Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) scheme over the entire period. The CFSR global atmosphere resolution is ~38 km (T382) with 64 levels extending from the surface to 0.26 hPa. The global ocean's latitudinal spacing is 0.25° at the equator, extending to a global 0.5° beyond the tropics, with 40 levels to a depth of 4737 m. The global land surface model has four soil levels and the global sea ice m...

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The NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis

. By coordinating the design and distribution of global climate model simulations of the past, current, and future climate, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) has become one of the foundational elements of climate science. However, the need to address an ever-expanding range of scientific questions arising from more and more research communities has made it necessary to revise the organization of CMIP. After a long and wide community consultation, a new and more federated structure has been put in place. It consists of three major elements: (1) a handful of common experiments, the DECK (Diagnostic, Evaluation and Characterization of Klima) and CMIP historical simulations (1850–near present) that will maintain continuity and help document basic characteristics of models across different phases of CMIP; (2) common standards, coordination, infrastructure, and documentation that will facilitate the distribution of model outputs and the characterization of the model ensemble; and (3) an ensemble of CMIP-Endorsed Model Intercomparison Projects (MIPs) that will be specific to a particular phase of CMIP (now CMIP6) and that will build on the DECK and CMIP historical simulations to address a large range of specific questions and fill the scientific gaps of the previous CMIP phases. The DECK and CMIP historical simulations, together with the use of CMIP data standards, will be the entry cards for models participating in CMIP. Participation in CMIP6-Endorsed MIPs by individual modelling groups will be at their own discretion and will depend on their scientific interests and priorities. With the Grand Science Challenges of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) as its scientific backdrop, CMIP6 will address three broad questions: – How does the Earth system respond to forcing? – What are the origins and consequences of systematic model biases? – How can we assess future climate changes given internal climate variability, predictability, and uncertainties in scenarios? This CMIP6 overview paper presents the background and rationale for the new structure of CMIP, provides a detailed description of the DECK and CMIP6 historical simulations, and includes a brief introduction to the 21 CMIP6-Endorsed MIPs.

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Overview of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) experimental design and organization

The NCEP–DOE Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP-II) reanalysis is a follow-on project to the “50-year” (1948–present) NCEP–NCAR Reanalysis Project. NCEP–DOE AMIP-II re-analysis covers the “20-year” satellite period of 1979 to the present and uses an updated forecast model, updated data assimilation system, improved diagnostic outputs, and fixes for the known processing problems of the NCEP–NCAR reanalysis. Only minor differences are found in the primary analysis variables such as free atmospheric geopotential height and winds in the Northern Hemisphere extratropics, while significant improvements upon NCEP–NCAR reanalysis are made in land surface parameters and land–ocean fluxes. This analysis can be used as a supplement to the NCEP–NCAR reanalysis especially where the original analysis has problems. The differences between the two analyses also provide a measure of uncertainty in current analyses.

NCEP–DOE AMIP-II Reanalysis (R-2)

The Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP), initiated in 1989 under the auspices of the World Climate Research Programme, undertook the systematic validation, diagnosis, and intercomparison of the performance of atmospheric general circulation models. For this purpose all models were required to simulate the evolution of the climate during the decade 1979—88, subject to the observed monthly average temperature and sea ice and a common prescribed atmospheric CO2 concentration and solar constant. By 1995, 31 modeling groups, representing virtually the entire international atmospheric modeling community, had contributed the required standard output of the monthly means of selected statistics. These data have been analyzed by the participating modeling groups, by the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, and by the more than two dozen AMIP diagnostic subprojects that have been established to examine specific aspects of the models' performance. Here the analysis and valida...

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An Overview of the Results of the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP I)

This paper examines trend uncertainties in layer-average free atmosphere temperatures arising from the use of different trend estimation methods. It also considers statistical issues that arise in assessing the significance of individual trends and of trend differences between data sets. Possible causes of these trends are not addressed. We use data from satellite and radiosonde measurements and from two reanalysis projects. To facilitate intercomparison, we compute from reanalyses and radiosonde data temperatures equivalent to those from the satellite-based Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU). We compare linear trends based on minimization of absolute deviations (LA) and minimization of squared deviations (LS). Differences are generally less than 0.05°C/decade over 1959–1996. Over 1979–1993, they exceed 0.10°C/decade for lower tropospheric time series and 0.15°C/decade for the lower stratosphere. Trend fitting by the LA method can degrade the lower-tropospheric trend agreement of 0.03°C/decade (over 1979–1996) previously reported for the MSU and radiosonde data. In assessing trend significance we employ two methods to account for temporal autocorrelation effects. With our preferred method, virtually none of the individual 1979–1993 trends in deep-layer temperatures are significantly different from zero. To examine trend differences between data sets we compute 95% confidence intervals for individual trends and show that these overlap for almost all data sets considered. Confidence intervals for lower-tropospheric trends encompass both zero and the model-projected trends due to anthropogenic effects. We also test the significance of a trend in d(t), the time series of differences between a pair of data sets. Use of d(t) removes variability common to both time series and facilitates identification of small trend differences. This more discerning test reveals that roughly 30% of the data set comparisons have significant differences in lower-tropospheric trends, primarily related to differences in measurement system. Our study gives empirical estimates of statistical uncertainties in recent atmospheric temperature trends. These estimates and the simple significance testing framework used here facilitate the interpretation of previous temperature trend comparisons involving satellite, radiosonde, and reanalysis data sets.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/1999JD901105

Statistical significance of trends and trend differences in layer-average atmospheric temperature time series

NCEP-DOE AMIP-II reanalysis (R-2). Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society .

To significantly improve the simulation of climate by general circulation models (GCMs), systematic errors in representations of relevant processes must first be identified, and then reduced. This endeavor demands that the GCM parameterizations of unresolved processes, in particular, should be tested over a wide range of time scales, not just in climate simulations. Thus, a numerical weather prediction (NWP) methodology for evaluating model parameterizations and gaining insights into their behavior may prove useful, provided that suitable adaptations are made for implementation in climate GCMs. This method entails the generation of short-range weather forecasts by a realistically initialized climate GCM, and the application of six hourly NWP analyses and observations of parameterized variables to evaluate these forecasts. The behavior of the parameterizations in such a weather-forecasting framework can provide insights on how these schemes might be improved, and modified parameterizations then can be test...

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J. J. Hnilo

Papers

NCEP–DOE AMIP-II Reanalysis (R-2)

An Overview of the Results of the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP I)

Statistical significance of trends and trend differences in layer-average atmospheric temperature time series

NCEP-DOE AMIP-II reanalysis (R-2). Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society .

Evaluating Parameterizations in General Circulation Models: Climate Simulation Meets Weather Prediction