Some features of the periods contributing specified percentages of rainfall to annual total in Kerala,India

Based on daily rainfall data over a period of 80 years (1901–1980) taken at 75 stations, this paper reports interannual and long term fluctuations of the following parameters of the periods contributing each of 2, 5, 10, 20–90 and 95% rainfall to annual total over each of North Kerala and South Kerala rainfall subregions of India:

Kinetics of the reactions of hydroxyl radicals with aliphatic ethers studied under simulated atmospheric conditions: Temperature dependences of the rate coefficients

Rate coefficients have been measured for the reactions of hydroxyl radicals with five aliphatic ethers over the temperature range 242–328 K. Competitive studies were carried out in an atmospheric flow reactor in which the hydroxyl radicals were generated by the photolysis of methyl nitrite in the presence of air containing nitric oxide. The reaction of OH with 2,3-dimethyl-butane was used as the reference reaction and the following Arrhenius parameters have been obtained for the reactions: OH+RORproducts:

Unstably stratified geophysical fluid dynamics

The linear dynamics of the unstably stratified geophysical flows is investigated with a two-layer formulation. A ‘convective’ deformation radius classifies the dynamics into three regimes:

• 1. 

  1. the scales smaller than the deformation radius: the dynamics characterized by unstable inertial-gravity modes;

• 2. 

  2. the scales larger than the deformation radius: a quasi-geostrophic regime;

• 3. 

  3. the scales close to the deformation radius, where the dynamics transits from the inertial-gravity regime to the quasi-geostrophic regime.

The Rossby wave can propagate eastward in the unstably stratified quasi-geostrophic regime. The baroclinic instabilities are basically realized as a larger-scale extent of the inertial-gravity instabilities, but the former can be isolated from the latter in a limit of small β-effect, with a very deep lower layer. The results suggest that the convectively unstable Jovian atmospheric dynamics can be well described as a quasi-geostrophic system.     

Westwards moving disturbances in the Southwest Indian Ocean

The First Garp Global Experiment data collected during 1979 at sea level and 850 mb level have been used to examine the origin and characteristics of the westwards moving disturbances in the western Indian Ocean.From the analyses of the above data the following sequence of events in the westwards moving disturbances has emerged:

A land surface model (IAP94) for climate studies Part II: Implementation and preliminary results of coupled model with IAP GCM

The Institute of Atmospheric Physics Land Surface Model (IAP94) has been incorporated into the IAP two-level atmospheric general circulation model (IAP GCM). Global and regional climatology averaged over the last 25 years of 100 year integrations from the IAP GCM with and without IAP94 (“bucket” scheme) is compared. The simulated results are also compared with the reanalysis data. Major findings are:(1) The IAP GCM simulation without IAP94 has extensive regions of warmer than observed surface air tempera?tures, while the simulation with IAP94 very much improves the surface air temperature.(2) The IAP GCM simulation with IAP94 gives improvement of the simulated precipitation pattern and intensity, especially the precipitation of East Asian summer monsoon and its intraseasonal migration of the rainbelts.(3) In five selected typical regions, for most of the surface variables such as surface air temperature, precipitation, precipitation minus evaporation, net radiation, latent heat flux and sensible heat flux, the IAP GCM with IAP94 pro?vides better simulations.     

Intercomparisons of Experimental Convective Heat Transfer Coefficients and Mass Transfer Coefficients of Urban Surfaces

The convective heat transfer coefficient (CHTC) of an urban canopy is a crucial parameter for estimating the turbulent heat flux in an urban area. We compared recent experimental research on the CHTC and the mass transfer coefficient (MTC) of urban surfaces in the field and in wind tunnels. Our findings are summarised as follows.

Numerical study of the cloud seeding effects

The microphysical model with the bulk water parameterization is applied to simulated both contact and deposition nucleation as well as the imersion freezing for unseeded cases and the cases immediately after seeding performed for the cold continental Cb clouds with small cloud droplets. The injection of agent AgI is performed in temperature region between –8°C and –12°C. The four groups of sensitivity experiments are executed.

Retrieval of tropospheric co profiles using correlation radiometer: I. retrieval experiments for a clear atmosphere

This paper discusses the retrieval scheme associated with the gas correlated radiometer- MOPITT which will be on board of EOS-AM1 to measure the global vertical profiles of car-bon monoxide. The vertical resolution and retrieval errors caused by errors in the temperature profiles and in the surface temperature have been assessed. The main results are: a. Assuming the noise equivalent radiance (NER) of 1.8 × 105 W m-2 sr-1, the surface tem?perature can be deduced from the wide band signals with uncertainly less than 1 K, and the atmospheric term of the modulated signal can be deduced with errors almost equal to the NER which does not significantly increase errors in the retrieved CO profiles. b. With typical uncertainty in temperature profiles, errors in the retrieved profiles at lati-? tudes lower than 70o are generally less than 20% with the first guess of 100 ppbv. (If a better first guess was used, the errors may decrease). c. By incorporating the total column CO amount derived from the reflected solar radiation in 2.3 μm spectral region into the retrieval, the accuracy of the retrieved CO profile below 6 km may be greatly improved. d. In the retrieval experiment with 10 CO profiles representing the typical CO profiles, the r.m.s. relative / absolute errors of the retrieved CO profiles are about 10% / 15-20 ppbv.     

An objective method for assessing representativeness of a station network measuring minimum temperature near the ground

The spatial auto-correlation of minimum temperature was analyzed for a topoclimatological station network in the Huleh Valley of Israel on radiation cooling nights, using the method of optimum interpolation. Only a few stations all of which are situated in a flat area along the longitudinal central axis, exhibited a distinct dependence of the auto-correlation with distance. These stations were less representative of the entire valley compared with sites close to the slopes.The more varied topography near the edges of the valley leaves its stamp on the auto-correlation field in two specific ways:

Sensitivity of global warming to the pattern of tropical ocean warming

The current generations of climate models are in substantial disagreement as to the projected patterns of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Tropics over the next several decades. We show that the spatial patterns of tropical ocean temperature trends have a strong influence on global mean temperature and precipitation and on global mean radiative forcing. We identify the SST patterns with the greatest influence on the global mean climate and find very different, and often opposing, sensitivities to SST changes in the tropical Indian and West Pacific Oceans. Our work stresses the need to reduce climate model biases in these sensitive regions, as they not only affect the regional climates of the nearby densely populated continents, but also have a disproportionately large effect on the global climate.

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Multi-century simulations with the coupled GISS–HYCOM climate model: control experiments

Multi-century climate simulations obtained with the GISS atmospheric general circulation model coupled to the hybrid-isopycnic ocean model HYCOM are described. Greenhouse gas concentrations are held fixed in these experiments to investigate the coupled model’s ability to reproduce the major features of today’s climate with minimal drift. Emphasis is placed on the realism of the oceanic general circulation and its effect on air–sea exchange processes. Several model runs using different closures for turbulent vertical exchange as well as improvements to reduce vertical numerical diffusion are compared with climate observations. As in previous studies, the Southern Ocean emerges as the Achilles Heel of the ocean model; deficiencies in its physical representation had far-reaching consequences in early experiments with the coupled model and have provided the strongest impetus for model improvement. The overarching goal of this work is to add diversity to the pool of ocean models available for climate prediction and thereby reduce biases that may stand in the way of assessing climate prediction uncertainty.

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Future changes in cyclone climatology over Europe as inferred from a regional climate simulation

This study analyzes the cyclone climatology in regional climate model simulations of present day (1961–1990) and future (2071–2100, A2 and B2 emission scenarios) european climate conditions. The model domain covers the area from Scandinavia to Northern Africa and from the Eastern Atlantic to Russia at a horizontal grid spacing of 50 km. Compared to present day, in the A2 and B2 scenario conditions the annual average storm track intensity increases over the North-East Atlantic and decreases over Russia and the Eastern Mediterranean region. This overall change pattern is larger in the A2 than in the B2 simulations. However, the cyclone climatology change signal shows a large intermonthly variability and important differences across European regions. The largest changes are found over the North-East Atlantic, where the storm track intensity increases in winter and decreases in summer. A significant reduction of storm track intensity is found during late summer and autumn over the Mediterranean region, and from October to January over Russia. The number of cyclones decreases in future conditions throughout Europe, except over the Central Europe and Mediterranean regions in summer (where it increases). The frequency of intense cyclones and the depth of extreme cyclones increase over the North-East Atlantic, decrease over Russia and show an irregular response over the rest of the domain.

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The greening of the McGill Paleoclimate Model. Part I: Improved land surface scheme with vegetation dynamics

The formulation of a new land surface scheme (LSS) with vegetation dynamics for coupling to the McGill Paleoclimate Model (MPM) is presented. This LSS has the following notable improvements over the old version: (1) parameterization of deciduous and evergreen trees by using the models climatology and the output of the dynamic global vegetation model, VECODE (Brovkin et al. in Ecological Modelling 101:251–261 (1997), Global Biogeochemical Cycles 16(4):1139, (2002)); (2) parameterization of tree leaf budburst and leaf drop by using the models climatology; (3) parameterization of the seasonal cycle of the grass leaf area index; (4) parameterization of the seasonal cycle of tree leaf area index by using the time-dependent growth of the leaves; (5) calculation of land surface albedo by using vegetation-related parameters, snow depth and the models climatology. The results show considerable improvement of the models simulation of the present-day climate as compared with that simulated in the original physically-based MPM. In particular, the strong seasonality of terrestrial vegetation and the associated land surface albedo variations are in good agreement with several satellite observations of these quantities. The application of this new version of the MPM (the green MPM) to Holocene millennial-scale climate changes is described in a companion paper, Part II.

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Decadal interactions between the western tropical Pacific and the North Atlantic Oscillation

The relationship between interdecadal variations of tropical sea surface temperature (SST) in the last 120 years and circulation anomalies related to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is investigated in this study. Using an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM), we confirm observational evidence that variations in the SST gradient in the western tropical Pacific are related to the NAO anomalies on decadal timescale, and may be contributing to the shift towards the positive NAO phase observed in the late 20th century. The role played by the Indian Ocean-NAO teleconnection, advocated in recent studies focused on the last 50 years, is also assessed in the context of the 120-year long record. It is suggested that a positive feedback between the Pacific SST and the hemispheric circulation pattern embedding the decadal NAO signal may act to enhance the internal variability of the coupled ocean–atmosphere system, and justify the stronger teleconnection found in observational data than in SST-forced AGCM experiments.

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Seasonal climate predictability with Tier-one and Tier-two prediction systems

In this study seasonal predictability of Tier-one and Tier-two predictions are evaluated and compared. Through the comparison of these two predictions, it is demonstrated that the air–sea coupled process is an important factor not only for climatological simulation but also for seasonal predictability. In particular, the air–sea coupling plays a crucial role over the warm pool region, as the atmosphere tends to lead the ocean in anomalous variability. In this region, the Tier-one prediction has better climatology compared to the Tier-two prediction despite the presence of a climatological SST bias. Furthermore, the Tier-one has a relatively higher seasonal predictive skill than that of the Tier-two although its SST prediction skill is relatively poor. It is suggested that the air–sea coupled process plays a role to reduce both the climatological and anomalous biases in the uncoupled AGCM by means of the negative feedback of the SST-heat flux-precipitation loop. Using the CliPAS and DEMETER seasonal prediction data, the robustness of these results are demonstrated in the multi-model frame works. This paper is a contribution to the AMIP-CMIP Diagnostic Sub-project on General Circulation Model Simulation of the East Asian Climate, coordinated by W.-C. Wang.

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Analysis of the projected regional sea-ice changes in the Southern Ocean during the twenty-first century

Using the set of simulations performed with atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR4), the projected regional distribution of sea ice for the twenty-first century has been investigated. Averaged over all those model simulations, the current climate is reasonably well reproduced. However, this averaging procedure hides the errors from individual models. Over the twentieth century, the multimodel average simulates a larger sea-ice concentration decrease around the Antarctic Peninsula compared to other regions, which is in qualitative agreement with observations. This is likely related to the positive trend in the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) index over the twentieth century, in both observations and in the multimodel average. Despite the simulated positive future trend in SAM, such a regional feature around the Antarctic Peninsula is absent in the projected sea-ice change for the end of the twenty-first century. The maximum decrease is indeed located over the central Weddell Sea and the Amundsen–Bellingshausen Seas. In most models, changes in the oceanic currents could play a role in the regional distribution of the sea ice, especially in the Ross Sea, where stronger southward currents could be responsible for a smaller sea-ice decrease during the twenty-first century. Finally, changes in the mixed layer depth can be found in some models, inducing locally strong changes in the sea-ice concentration.

Factors contributing to the development of extreme North Atlantic cyclones and their relationship with the NAO

The occurrence of extreme cyclones is analysed in terms of their relationship to the NAO phase and the dominating environmental variables controlling their intensification. These are latent energy (equivalent potential temperature 850 hPa is used as an indicator), upper-air baroclinicity, horizontal divergence and jet stream strength. Cyclones over the North Atlantic are identified and tracked using a numerical algorithm, permitting a detailed analysis of their life cycles. Extreme cyclones are selected as the 10% most severe in terms of intensity. Investigations focus on the main strengthening phase of each cyclone. The environmental factors are related to the NAO, which affects the location and orientation of the cyclone tracks, thus explaining why extreme cyclones occur more (less) frequently during strong positive (negative) NAO phases. The enhanced number of extreme cyclones in positive NAO phases can be explained by the larger area with suitable growth conditions, which is better aligned with the cyclone tracks and is associated with increased cyclone life time and intensity. Moreover, strong intensification of cyclones is frequently linked to the occurrence of extreme values of growth factors in the immediate vicinity of the cyclone centre. Similar results are found for ECHAM5/OM1 for present day conditions, demonstrating that relationships between the environment factors and cyclones are also valid in the GCM. For future climate conditions (following the SRES A1B scenario), the results are similar, but a small increase of the frequency of extreme values is detected near the cyclone cores. On the other hand, total cyclone numbers decrease by 10% over the North Atlantic. An exception is the region near the British Isles, which features increased track density and intensity of extreme cyclones irrespective of the NAO phase. These changes are associated with an intensified jet stream close to Europe. Moreover, an enhanced frequency of explosive developments over the British Isles is found, leading to more frequent windstorms affecting Europe.