An Assessment of ERA5 Reanalysis for Antarctic Near-Surface Air Temperature

The European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) released its latest reanalysis dataset named ERA5 in 2017. To assess the performance of Antarctica, we compare near-surface temperature data from and ERA-Interim with measured 41 weather stations. has a strong linear relationship monthly observations, statistical significant correlation coefficients (p < 0.05) are higher than 0.95 at all stations selected. shows regional differences, correlations high West Antarctica low East Antarctica. Compared ERA5, slightly observations Antarctic Peninsula. agrees well austral spring, 0.90 bias lower 0.70 °C. trend is consistent that which cooling dominates while warming exists Peninsula except during summer. Generally, can effectively represent changes three subregions. Although bias, play an important role as powerful tool to explore climate change sparse situ observations.