J. Wright, and S. Fueglistaler

Reanalysis estimates of the diabatic heat budget in the tropical UTLS

Diabatic heat budgets differ significantly among reanalysis datasets. These differences have substantial implications for representations of transport and mixing, both within the reanalyses themselves and in models that use reanalysis data as input. We analyze differences in the heat budget of the upper troposphere (UT) and lower stratosphere (LS) among five reanalyses: the Modern Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA), ERA-Interim, the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR), the JRA-25 and JMA Climate Data Assimilation System, and the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis. We present annual mean climatologies for the period 2001–2010, with particular attention paid to some of the most pronounced differences, along with assessments of Lagrangian transit time and trajectory dispersion.
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