Equatorial Mid-Tropospheric Easterly Jet over the eastern Pacific: Comparison from the ECMWF and NCEP-NCAR reanalyses

A note on the deficiency of NCEP/NCAR reanalysis surface winds over the equatorial Indian Ocean

[1] The seasonal cycle and intraseasonal variability of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP) reanalysis surface winds over the Indian Ocean (IO) are assessed by comparing them with in situ surface observations from two moored buoys and winds from the SeaWinds scatterometer on the QuikSCAT satellite. The buoys are located in the centra...

On Equatorial Pacific Surface Wind Changes around 1977: NCEP-NCAR Reanalysis versus COADS Observation

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE Evaluation of the NCEP–NCAR and ECMWF 15- and 40-Yr Reanalyses Using Rawinsonde Data from Two Independent Arctic Field Experiments*

Many aspects of reanalysis data are of high quality over regions with sufficiently dense data, but the accuracy is uncertain over areas with sparse observations. NCEP–NCAR reanalysis (NNR) and ECMWF 15/40-Yr Re-Analysis (ERA-15 and ERA-40) variables are compared to two independent rawinsonde datasets from the periphery of the Arctic Ocean during the late 1980s and early 1990s: the Coordinated E...

Upper-tropospheric inversion and easterly jet in the tropics

[1] Shipboard radiosonde measurements revealed a persistent temperature inversion layer with a thickness of 200 m at 12–13 km in a nonconvective region over the tropical eastern Pacific, along 2 N, in September 1999. Simultaneous relative humidity measurements indicated that the thin inversion layer was located at the top of a very wet layer with a thickness of 3–4 km, which was found to origin...

Trends in tropospheric humidity from reanalysis systems

[1] A recent paper (Paltridge et al., 2009) found that specific humidity in the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/ NCAR) reanalysis declined between 1973 and 2007, particularly in the tropical mid and upper troposphere, the region that plays the key role in the water vapor feedback. If borne out, this result suggests potential problems ...