Climate and Environmental Change

Reliability of NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data in the Himalayas/Tibetan Plateau

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  • 1. State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Science, Cold and Arid Regions Environment and Engineering Re-search Institute, CAS, Lanzhou 730000, China|
    2. Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, CAS, Beijing 100085, China

Received date: 2007-06-26

  Revised date: 2007-08-20

  Online published: 2007-12-25

Supported by

National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.40501015; No. 90411003; Innovation Program of CAS, No.KZCX3-SW-344; No.KZCX3-SW-354

Abstract

Due to the difficult logistics in the extreme high elevation regions over the Himala-yas and Tibetan Plateau, the observational meteorological data are very few. In 2003, an automatic weather station was deployed at the northeastern saddle of Mt. Nyainqentanglha (NQ) (30°24′44.3″ N, 90°34′13.1″ E, 5850 m a.s.l.), the southern Tibetan Plateau. In 2005, another station was operated at the East Rongbuk Glacier Col (28°01′0.95″ N, 86°57′48.4″ E, 6523 m a.s.l.) of Mt. Qomolangma. Observational data from the two sites have been com-pared with the reanalysis data from the National Centers for Environmental Predic-tion/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR), reliability of NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data has been investigated in the Himalayas/Tibetan Plateau region. The reanaly-sis data can capture much of the synoptic-scale variability in temperature and pressure, al-though the reanalysis values are systematically lower than the observation. Furthermore, most of the variability magnitude is, to some degree, underestimated. In addition, the weather event extracted from the NCEP/NCAR reanalyzed pressure and temperature prominently appears one day ahead of the observational data on Mt. Qomolangma, while on Mt. NQ it occurs basically in the same day.

Cite this article

XIE Aihong, REN Jiawen, QIN Xiang, KANG Shichang . Reliability of NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data in the Himalayas/Tibetan Plateau[J]. Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2007 , 17(4) : 421 -430 . DOI: 10.1007/s11442-007-0421-2

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