. Framed within the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) of the European Commission,
the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is producing an enhanced global dataset for the land component of the fifth generation of European ReAnalysis (ERA5), hereafter referred to as ERA5-Land. Once completed, the period covered will span from 1950 to the present, with continuous updates to support land monitoring applications. ERA5-Land describes the evolution of the water and energy cycles over land in a consistent manner over the production period, which, among others, could be used to analyse trends and anomalies.
This is achieved through global high-resolution numerical integrations of the ECMWF land surface model driven by the downscaled meteorological forcing from the ERA5 climate reanalysis, including an elevation correction for the thermodynamic near-surface state. ERA5-Land shares with ERA5
most of the parameterizations that guarantees the use of the state-of-the-art land surface modelling applied to numerical weather prediction (NWP) models.
A main advantage of ERA5-Land compared to ERA5 and the older ERA-Interim is the horizontal resolution, which is enhanced globally to 9 km compared to 31 km (ERA5) or 80 km (ERA-Interim), whereas the temporal resolution
is hourly as in ERA5. Evaluation against independent in situ observations
and global model or satellite-based reference datasets shows the added value
of ERA5-Land in the description of the hydrological cycle, in particular
with enhanced soil moisture and lake description, and an overall better agreement of
river discharge estimations with available observations. However, ERA5-Land snow depth fields present a mixed performance when compared to those of ERA5, depending on geographical location and altitude.
The description of the
energy cycle shows comparable results with ERA5. Nevertheless, ERA5-Land reduces the global averaged root mean square error of the skin temperature, taking as
reference MODIS data, mainly due to the contribution of
coastal points where spatial resolution is important.
Since January 2020, the ERA5-Land period available has extended from January 1981 to the near present, with a
2- to 3-month delay with respect to real time. The segment prior to 1981 is in production, aiming for a release of the whole dataset in summer/autumn 2021.
The high spatial and temporal resolution of ERA5-Land, its extended period, and the consistency of the fields produced makes it a valuable dataset to support hydrological studies,
to initialize NWP and climate models,
and to support diverse applications dealing with water resource, land, and environmental management. The full ERA5-Land hourly ( Munoz-Sabater ,  2019 a ) and monthly ( Munoz-Sabater ,  2019 b ) averaged datasets presented in this paper are available through the C3S Climate Data Store at https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.e2161bac and https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.68d2bb30 , respectively.

/pdf/era5-land-a-state-of-the-art-global-reanalysis-dataset-for-2r0nod1j4y.pdf

ERA5-Land: a state-of-the-art global reanalysis dataset for land applications

Abstract In recent decades, the warming in the Arctic has been much faster than in the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. Numerous studies report that the Arctic is warming either twice, more than twice, or even three times as fast as the globe on average. Here we show, by using several observational datasets which cover the Arctic region, that during the last 43 years the Arctic has been warming nearly four times faster than the globe, which is a higher ratio than generally reported in literature. We compared the observed Arctic amplification ratio with the ratio simulated by state-of-the-art climate models, and found that the observed four-fold warming ratio over 1979–2021 is an extremely rare occasion in the climate model simulations. The observed and simulated amplification ratios are more consistent with each other if calculated over a longer period; however the comparison is obscured by observational uncertainties before 1979. Our results indicate that the recent four-fold Arctic warming ratio is either an extremely unlikely event, or the climate models systematically tend to underestimate the amplification. 

/pdf/the-arctic-has-warmed-nearly-four-times-faster-than-the-2f7lp97b.pdf

The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979

We present a new version of the Met Office Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit global surface temperature dataset, HadCRUT5. HadCRUT5 presents monthly average near-surface temperature anomalies, relative to the 1961-1990 period, on a regular 5° latitude by 5° longitude grid from 1850 to 2018. HadCRUT5 is a combination of sea-surface temperature measurements over the ocean from ships and buoys and near-surface air temperature measurements from weather stations over the land surface. These data have been sourced from updated compilations and the adjustments applied to mitigate the impact of changes in sea-surface temperature measurement methods have been revised. Two variants of HadCRUT5 have been produced for use in different applications. The first represents temperature anomaly data on a grid for locations where measurement data are available. The second, more spatially complete, variant uses a Gaussian process based statistical method to make better use of the available observations, extending temperature anomaly estimates into regions for which the underlying measurements are informative. Each is provided as a 200-member ensemble accompanied by additional uncertainty information. The combination of revised input datasets and statistical analysis results in greater warming of the global average over the course of the whole record. In recent years, increased warming results from an improved representation of Arctic warming and a better understanding of evolving biases sea-surface temperature measurements from ships. These updates result in greater consistency with other independent global surface temperature datasets, despite their different approaches to dataset construction, and further increase confidence in our understanding of changes seen.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2019JD032361

An Updated Assessment of Near-Surface Temperature Change From 1850: The HadCRUT5 Data Set

This paper describes the GISS-E2.1 contribution to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, Phase 6 (CMIP6). This model version differs from the predecessor model (GISS-E2) chiefly due to parameterization improvements to the atmospheric and ocean model components, while keeping atmospheric resolution the same. Model skill when compared to modern era climatologies is significantly higher than in previous versions. Additionally, updates in forcings have a material impact on the results. In particular, there have been specific improvements in representations of modes of variability (such as the Madden-Julian Oscillation and other modes in the Pacific) and significant improvements in the simulation of the climate of the Southern Oceans, including sea ice. The effective climate sensitivity to 2 × CO2 is slightly higher than previously at 2.7-3.1°C (depending on version) and is a result of lower CO2 radiative forcing and stronger positive feedbacks.

GISS-E2.1: Configurations and Climatology.

Sudden stratospheric warmings (SSWs) are impressive fluid dynamical events in which large and rapid temperature increases in the winter polar stratosphere (⁓10‐50km) are associated with a complete reversal of the climatological wintertime westerly winds. SSWs are caused by the breaking of planetary‐scale waves that propagate upwards from the troposphere. During an SSW, the polar vortex breaks down, accompanied by rapid descent and warming of air in polar latitudes, mirrored by ascent and cooling above the warming. The rapid warming and descent of the polar air column affects tropospheric weather, shifting jet streams, storm tracks, and the Northern Annular Mode, making cold air outbreaks over North America and Eurasia more likely. SSWs affect the atmosphere above the stratosphere, producing widespread effects on atmospheric chemistry, temperatures, winds, neutral (non‐ionized) particles and electron densities, and electric fields. These effects span both hemispheres. Given their crucial role in the whole atmosphere, SSWs are also seen as a key process to analyze in climate change studies and subseasonal to seasonal prediction. This work reviews the current knowledge on the most important aspects of SSWs, from the historical background to dynamical processes, modelling, chemistry, and impact on other atmospheric layers.

/pdf/sudden-stratospheric-warmings-2h1dgxmy4i.pdf

Xavier Abellan

Papers

The ERA5 global reanalysis