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A National Program for Analysis of the Climate SystemPerhaps the single greatest roadblock to fundamental advances in our understanding of climate variability and climate change is the lack of robust and unbiased long-term global observations of the climate system. Such observations are critical for the identification and diagnosis of climate variations, and provide the constraints necessary for developing and validating climate models. The first generation of reanalysis efforts, by using fixed analysis systems, eliminated the artificial climate signals that occurred in analyses generated at the operational numerical weather prediction centers. These datasets are now widely used by the scientific community in a variety of applications including atmosphere-ocean interactions, seasonal prediction, climate monitoring, the hydrological cycle, and a host of regional and other diagnostic studies. These reanalyses, however, had problems that made them sub-optimal or even unusable for some applications. Perhaps the most serious problem for climate applications was that, while the assimilation system remained fixed, changes in the observing systems did produce spurious changes in the perceived climate. The first generation reanalysis products also exposed problems with physical consistency of the products and the accurate representation of physical processes in the climate system. Examples are bias in the estimates of ocean surface fluxes, and inadequate representation of polar hydrology. In this talk, I will describe some initial plans for a national program on reananlysis. The program is envisioned to be part of an on-going activity to maintain, improve, and reprocess our record of climate observations. I will discuss various issues affecting the quality of reanalyses, with a special focus on those relevant to the ocean.
Document ID
20040000183
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Schubert, Siegfried
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Arkin, Phil
(Maryland Univ.)
Kalnay, Eugenia
(Maryland Univ.)
Laver, James
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
Trenberth, Kevin
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
Date Acquired
August 21, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2002
Subject Category
Meteorology And Climatology
Meeting Information
Meeting: American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting
Location: San Francisco, CA
Country: United States
Start Date: December 6, 2002
End Date: December 10, 2002
Sponsors: American Geophysical Union
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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