Journal of Climate back issues from September 2008:
Subseasonal SST Variability in the Tropical Eastern North Pacific during Boreal Summer
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Boreal summer intraseasonal (30-90-day time scale) sea surface temperature (SST) variability in the east Pacific warm pool is examined using Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI) sea surface temperatures during 1998-2005. Intraseasonal SST variance ...
Interannual to Diurnal Variations in Tropical and Subtropical Deep Convective Clouds and Convective Overshooting from Seven Years of AMSU-B Measurements
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT This study surveys interannual to diurnal variations of tropical deep convective clouds and convective overshooting using the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit B (AMSU-B) aboard the NOAA polar orbiting satellites from 1999 to 2005. The methodology used to detect tropical deep ...
Erroneous Relationships among Humidity and Cloud Forcing Variables in Three Global Climate Models
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Links are examined between time-averaged cloud radiative properties, particularly the longwave and shortwave components of cloud radiative forcing (CRF), and properties of the long-term averages of atmospheric soundings, in particular upper-tropospheric humidity (UTH), ...
Frequency Distribution of Daily ITCZ Patterns over the Western-Central Pacific
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT This study attempts to explore a comprehensive and compact approach for delineating the multiscale and multivariate characteristics of the ITCZ over the western-central Pacific based on daily satellite observations of precipitation, SSTs, and surface winds. Essentially six ...
Interdecadal Sea Surface Temperature Variability in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean. Part II: The Role of Equatorial/Off-Equatorial Wind Stresses in a Hybrid Coupled Model
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Many modeling studies have been carried out to investigate the role of oceanic Rossby waves linking the off-equatorial and equatorial Pacific Ocean. Although the equatorial ocean response to off-equatorial wind stress forcing alone tends to be relatively small, it is clear that ...
Cloud Effects on the Meridional Atmospheric Energy Budget Estimated from Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) Data
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT The zonal mean atmospheric cloud radiative effect, defined as the difference between the top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) and surface cloud radiative effects, is estimated from 3 yr of Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) data. The zonal mean shortwave effect is ...
Northern Annular Mode Effects on the Land Surface Phenologies of Northern Eurasia
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Land surface phenology (LSP) is the spatiotemporal development of the vegetated land surface as revealed by synoptic sensors. Modeling LSP across northern Eurasia reveals the magnitude, significance, and spatial pattern of the influence of the northern annular mode. Here the ...
Robustness of Future Changes in Local Precipitation Extremes
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Reliable projections of future changes in local precipitation extremes are essential for informing policy decisions regarding mitigation and adaptation to climate change. In this paper, the extent to which the natural variability of the climate affects one's ability to project ...
Characteristics of the Northern Australian Rainy Season
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT A trend of increasing rainfall over much of north and northwest Australia over recent decades has contrasted with decreases over much of the rest of the continent. The increases have occurred during the summer months when the rainy season is dominated by the Australian monsoon ...
Relationships between Sea Surface Temperatures in the Gulf of California and Surge Events
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Relationships between sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Gulf of California (GoC) and moisture surge events during the North American Monsoon Experiment (NAME) were examined using the multiplatform-merged daily SST data and the final NCEP North American Regional ...
Tropical and Stratospheric Influences on Extratropical Short-Term Climate Variability
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT The relative impacts of tropical diabatic heating and stratospheric circulation anomalies on wintertime extratropical tropospheric variability are investigated in a linear inverse model (LIM) derived from the observed zero lag and 5-day lag covariances of 7-day running mean ...
Precipitation and Latent Heating Characteristics of the Major Tropical Western Pacific Cloud Regimes
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT An objective tropical cloud regime classification based on daytime averaged cloud-top pressure and optical thickness information from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) is combined with precipitation and latent heating characteristics derived using the ...
The 1976/77 Austral Summer Climate Transition Effects on the Atmospheric Circulation and Climate in Southern South America
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Previous works suggest that more El Niño-like conditions can be expected over the South American (SA) climate and atmospheric circulation because of the similarity of the predominately warm conditions in the sea surface temperature (SST) over the central-equatorial Pacific after ...
Regression-Based Methods for Finding Coupled Patterns
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT There are a variety of multivariate statistical methods for analyzing the relations between two datasets. Two commonly used methods are canonical correlation analysis (CCA) and maximum covariance analysis (MCA), which find the projections of the data onto coupled patterns with ...
Equilibrium Response of an Atmosphere-Mixed Layer Ocean Model to Different Radiative Forcing Agents: Global and Zonal Mean Response
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT The equilibrium response to various forcing agents, including CO2, solar irradiance, tropospheric ozone, black carbon, organic carbon, sulfate, and volcanic aerosols, is investigated using an atmospheric general circulation model coupled to a mixed layer ocean model. The ...
Do CGCMs Simulate the North American Monsoon Precipitation Seasonal-Interannual Variability?
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT This study uses the most recent simulations from all available fully coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (CGCMs) to investigate whether the North American monsoon (NAM) precipitation seasonal-interannual variations are simulated and, if so, whether the key ...
How to Measure the Strength of the East Asian Summer Monsoon
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Defining the intensity of the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) has been extremely controversial. This paper elaborates on the meanings of 25 existing EASM indices in terms of two observed major modes of interannual variation in the precipitation and circulation anomalies for the ...
Interdecadal Variability of Western North Pacific Tropical Cyclone Tracks
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT This study examines the interdecadal variability of the tropical cyclone (TC) tracks over the western North Pacific (WNP) during the 1960-2005 period. An empirical orthogonal function analysis of the 10-yr Gaussian-filtered annual frequency of TC occurrence shows three leading ...
Boreal Summer Intraseasonal Variability in Coupled Seasonal Hindcasts
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT The intraseasonal variability (ISV) of the Asian summer monsoon represented in seven coupled general circulation models (CGCMs) as part of the Development of a European Multimodel Ensemble System for Seasonal-to-Interannual Prediction (DEMETER) project is analyzed and evaluated ...
Employing Satellite-Derived Sea Ice Concentration to Constrain Upper-Ocean Temperature in a Global Ocean GCM
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT The quality of Southern Ocean sea ice simulations in a global ocean general circulation model (GCM) depends decisively on the simulated upper-ocean temperature. This is confirmed by assimilating satellite-derived sea ice concentration to constrain the upper-layer temperature of ...
Water Masses in the Pacific in CCSM3
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT An examination of model water masses in the North Pacific Ocean is performed in the Community Climate System version 3 (CCSM3) and its ocean-only counterpart. While the surface properties of the ocean are well represented in both simulations, biases in thermocline and ...
CORRIGENDUM
Sep 01, 2008; ... Due to a press error, an incorrect version of Fig. 9 was published in "Predictive Skill of AGCM Seasonal Climate Forecasts Subject to Different SST Prediction Methodologies," by Shuhua Li, Lisa Goddard, and David G. DeWitt, which was published in the Journal of ...
Stationarity of Regression Relationships: Application to Empirical Downscaling
Sep 01, 2008; ... ABSTRACT The performance of a statistical downscaling model is usually evaluated for its ability to explain a large fraction of predictand variance. In this note, it is shown that although this fraction may be high, the longest time scales, including trends, may not be explained by the ...
CORRIGENDUM
Sep 01, 2008; ... There were two figure-related errors in "The Spatiotemporal Structure of Twentieth-Century Climate Variations in Observations and Reanalyses. Part I: Long-Term Trend," by Junye Chen, Anthony D. Del Genio, Barbara E. Carlson, and Michael G. Bosilovich, which was published in the Journal of ...
Subseasonal Variability Associated with Asian Summer Monsoon Simulated by 14 IPCC AR4 Coupled GCMs
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT This study evaluates the subseasonal variability associated with the Asian summer monsoon in 14 coupled general circulation models (GCMs) participating in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). Eight years of each model's ...
The Thermal Wake of Kauai Island: Satellite Observations and Numerical Simulations*
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Island thermal effects on the trail cloud band over the central North Pacific are investigated for the lee of Hawaii using satellite observations and a regional atmospheric model. The trail cloud band develops around noon and peaks in cloudiness in the early afternoon. The ...
Toward Climate Prediction: Interannual Potential Predictability due to an Increase in CO2 Concentration as Diagnosed from an Ensemble of AO GCM Integrations
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Predictability studies of the second kind are often carried out to address the potential in predicting atmospheric variables based on knowledge of changes in sea surface temperature (SST). Here a predictability study of the second kind is performed for the coupled ...
Toward Elimination of the Warm Bias in Historic Radiosonde Temperature Records-Some New Results from a Comprehensive Intercomparison of Upper-Air Data
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT The apparent cooling trend in observed global mean temperature series from radiosonde records relative to Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) radiances has been a long-standing problem in upper-air climatology. It is very likely caused by a warm bias of radiosonde temperatures in the ...
Interpreting the Atmospheric Circulation Trend during the Last Half of the Twentieth Century: Application of an Adjoint Model
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT A tangent linear adjoint for a low-resolution dynamical model of the atmosphere is used to derive the optimal forcing perturbations for all state variables such that after a specified lead time the model response has a given projection, in terms of an energy norm, on the pattern ...
Links between Tropical Pacific SST and Cholera Incidence in Bangladesh: Role of the Eastern and Central Tropical Pacific
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Recent studies arising from both statistical analysis and dynamical disease models indicate that there is a link between incidence of cholera, a paradigmatic waterborne bacterial disease (WBD) endemic to Bangladesh, and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). However, a ...
The Seasonal Cycle of Gravity Wave Drag in the Middle Atmosphere
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Using a variational technique, middle atmosphere gravity wave drag (GWD) is estimated from Met Office middle atmosphere analyses for the year 2002. The technique employs an adjoint model of a middle atmosphere dynamical model to minimize a cost function that measures the ...
Teleconnection between NAO and Climate Downstream of the Tibetan Plateau
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Analysis of the monthly NCEP-NCAR reanalysis data and station data reveals a teleconnection pattern (NAULEA) that links climate changes over the North Atlantic and Eurasia. The NAULEA pattern has five action centers. It extends from the North Atlantic to northwestern Europe, and ...
Subtropical Forcing of Tropical Pacific Climate and Decadal ENSO Modulation
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT The relative impact of the subtropical North and South Pacific Oceans on the tropical Pacific climate mean state and variability is estimated using an ocean-atmosphere-sea ice coupled general circulation model. Tailored experiments are performed in which the model is forced by ...
Hurricane Alley SST Variability in 2005 and 2006*
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT The North Atlantic hurricane seasons of 2005 and 2006 were dramatically different for the Gulf Coast and eastern seaboard of the United States. The 2005 hurricane season was one of the most destructive seasons in history, whereas there was limited impact in 2006. Hurricane ...
Evaluation of the Surface Radiation Budget in the Atmospheric Component of the Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model (HadGEM1)
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT The partitioning of the earth radiation budget (ERB) between its atmosphere and surface components is of crucial interest in climate studies as it has a significant role in the oceanic and atmospheric general circulation. An analysis of the present-day climate simulation of the ...
Decadal-Scale Temperature Trends in the Southern Hemisphere Ocean
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Long-term trends in the beat content of the Southern Hemisphere ocean are evaluated by comparing temperature profiles collected during the 1990s with profiles collected starting in the 1930s. Data are drawn both from ship-based hydrographic surveys and from autonomous floats ....
Origin of the Springtime Westerly Bias in Equatorial Atlantic Surface Winds in the Community Atmosphere Model Version 3 (CAM3) Simulation
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT This study makes the case that westerly bias in the surface winds of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Atmosphere Model, version 3 (CAM3), over the equatorial Atlantic in boreal spring has its origin in the rainfall (diabatic heating) bias over the ...
Geographical Variations of the Influence of Low-Frequency Variability on Lower-Tropospheric Extreme Westerly Wind Events
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT A conceptual framework is developed for quantifying the relationship between low-frequency variability and extreme events. In this framework, variability is decomposed into low-frequency and synoptic components using complementary 10-day low-pass and high-pass filters, and a ...
Relationships between Arctic Sea Ice and Clouds during Autumn
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT The connection between sea ice variability and cloud cover over the Arctic seas during autumn is investigated by analyzing the 40-yr ECMWF Re-Analysis (ERA-40) products and the Television and Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS) Operational Vertical Sounder (TOVS) Polar ...
Interdecadal Variation of ENSO Predictability in Multiple Models
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT In this study, El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) retrospective forecasts were performed for the 120 yr from 1881 to 2000 using three realistic models that assimilate the historic dataset of sea surface temperature (SST). By examining these retrospective forecasts and ...
Asymmetry of the Indian Ocean Dipole. Part I: Observational Analysis*
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT The physical mechanism for the amplitude asymmetry of SST anomalies (SSTA) between the positive and negative phases of the Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) is investigated, using Simple Ocean Data Assimilation (SODA) and NCAR-NCEP data. It is found that a strong negative skewness ...
Mechanisms of Low Cloud-Climate Feedback in Idealized Single-Column Simulations with the Community Atmospheric Model, Version 3 (CAM3)
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT This study investigates the physical mechanism of low cloud feedback in the Community Atmospheric Model, version 3 (CAM3) through idealized single-column model (SCM) experiments over the subtropical eastern oceans. Negative cloud feedback is simulated from stratus and ...
Asymmetry of the Indian Ocean Dipole. Part II: Model Diagnosis*
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT In this second part of a two-part paper, the mechanism for the amplitude asymmetry of SST anomalies (SSTA) between positive and negative Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) events is investigated through the diagnosis of coupled model simulations. Same as the observed in Part I, a ...
Long-Term Changes in Ice Phenology of the Yellow River in the Past Decades
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT The authors quantitatively describe the changes in the characteristics of ice phenology including the flow rate and freeze/breakup dates of the Yellow River based on observations of the past 50 yr. In both the upper and lower reaches of the Yellow River, increasing temperature ...
Methods for Starting the Detection of Undocumented Multiple Changepoints
Sep 15, 2008; ... ABSTRACT Four algorithms are given, as a first step toward the practical detection of undocumented multiple changepoints. These algorithms are based on the two-phase regression method of Lund and Reeves, as well as the robust method of Lazante. The result of each method is a set that ...