Sakari Uppala talks with
ScienceWatch.com and answers a few questions about
this month's Emerging Research Front Paper in the field of
Geosciences. The author has also sent along images of
their work.
Title: The ERA-40
re-analysis Authors:
Uppala, SM,
et. al
Journal: QUART J ROY METEOROL SOC, 131 (612): 2961-3012
Part B, OCT 2005
Figure 1: Number of projects
using ERA-40 data in different subject areas.
(Based on an early
review done in
2004).
Figure 2:
Figure 2: Time series of daily
hemispheric root-mean-square differences
between in-situ measurements and the six hour
prediction of surface pressure (hPa) before
(red) and after (blue) constraining the six
hour prediction by all observations from 1957
to 2002. The uncertainties in the Southern
Hemisphere are much larger than in the Northern
Hemisphere and the introduction of the first
satellite sounding data in 1972 reduces the
uncertainty considerably. This is even more
dramatically seen in 1979 when major new
satellite systems were introduced.
Figure 3:
Figure 3: Time series of
global mean monthly anomalies in lower
stratospheric temperatures from ERA-40 and from
Remote Sensing Systems using microwave
data.
Figure 4:
Figure 4: Trends in 2-meter
temperature time series represented by
temperature anomalies from the 1987-2001 mean
for the ERA-40 reanalysis and for the Climatic
Research of Unit analysis.