Predictability of weather and climate

Abstract:

The EC-Earth consortium is a grouping of meteorologists and Earth-system scientists from 10 European countries, put together to face the challenges of climate and weather forecasting. The NWP system of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECWMF) forms the basis of the EC-Earth Earth-system model. NWP models are designed to accurately capture short-term atmospheric fluctuations. They are used for forecasts at daily-to-seasonal time scales and include data assimilation capabilities. Climate models are designed to represent the global coupled ocean-atmosphere system. The atmospheric model of EC-Earth version 2, is based on ECMWF's Integrated Forecasting System (IFS), cycle 31R1, corresponding to the current seasonal forecast system of ECMWF. The EC-Earth consortium and ECMWF are collaborating on development of initialization procedures to improve long-term predictions. The EC-Earth model displays good performance from daily up to inter-annual time scales and for long-term mean climate.

Abstract:

The author, T. N. Palmer describes a book by Isaac Asimov titled Nightfall, which describes a civilization's first encounter with darkness for thousands of years. The civilization inhabits the planet Lagash, which orbits one of six gravitationally-bound suns. Nightfall occurs during a total eclipse, when only one of the suns is above the horizon. Although in this sense climate change is inherently predictable, the author is not confirm whether how reliable the predictions of climate change are in practice. The first message of the story is that reliable predictions of regional climate change are crucially important to guide decisions on infrastructure investment for societies to adapt to future climate change. The second message of the story is that if current climate models can systematically misrepresent the regional effects of the annual cycle, they can also misrepresent the regional effects of climate change. One way to reduce these systematic deficiencies would be to simulate more of the climate system with the proper equations of motion.

Abstract:

National climate research facilities must be enhanced and dedicated multi-national facilities should be established to accelerate progress in understanding and predicting regional climate change. In addition to the merits of running climate models at a resolution comparable with that of NWP models, the continual confrontation of an NWP model with observations can provide important constraints when the same model is used for much longer-time-scale climate predictions. Short-range forecast models give encouraging results using grid lengths of close to 1 km, without parameterizing deep convection. Prediction uncertainty, a key variable can be estimated by making an ensemble of forecasts with varying initial conditions, model equations, and other input fields such as greenhouse gas concentrations. The new generation of models will yield improved statistics of daily weather and, therefore, better predictions of regional climate variations on seasonal time scales.

Abstract:

Inspection of near-infrared images from Cassini's Imaging Science Subsystem and Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer have revealed a new feature in Titan's haze structure: a narrow band of increased scattering by haze south of the equator. The band seems to indicate a region of very limited mixing in the lower stratosphere, which causes haze particles to be trapped there. This could explain the sharp separation between the two hemispheres, known as the north-south asymmetry, seen in images. The separation of the two hemispheres can also be seen in the stratosphere above 150 km using infrared spectra measured by Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer. Titan's behaviour in the lower tropical stratosphere is remarkably similar to that of the Earth's tropical stratosphere, which hints at possible common dynamical processes. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Abstract:

The climatology of a stratosphere-resolving version of the Met Office's climate model is studied and validated against ECMWF reanalysis data. Ensemble integrations are carried out at two different horizontal resolutions. Along with a realistic climatology and annual cycle in zonal mean zonal wind and temperature, several physical effects are noted in the model. The time of final warming of the winter polar vortex is found to descend monotonically in the Southern Hemisphere, as would be expected for purely radiative forcing. In the Northern Hemisphere, however, the time of final warming is driven largely by dynamical effects in the lower stratosphere and radiative effects in the upper stratosphere, leading to the earliest transition to westward winds being seen in the midstratosphere. A realistic annual cycle in stratospheric water vapor concentrations-the tropical "tape recorder"-is captured. Tropical variability in the zonal mean zonal wind is found to be in better agreement with the reanalysis for the model run at higher horizontal resolution because the simulated quasibiennial oscillation has a more realistic amplitude. Unexpectedly, variability in the extratropics becomes less realistic under increased resolution because of reduced resolved wave drag and increased orographic gravity wave drag. Overall, the differences in climatology between the simulations at high and moderate horizontal resolution are found to be small. © 2010 American Meteorological Society.