Web-based Reanalysis Intercomparison Tools (WRIT)

A set of web-based reanalysis intercomparison tools (WRIT) is available from the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory and University of Colorado CIRES.

WRIT Maps WRIT Time-series WRIT Correlations WRIT Trajectories WRIT Distributions

The "WRIT" Maps tool allows users to examine 20CR, ERA-Interim, ERA-20C, JRA-55, MERRA, MERRA-2, NCEP R1, NCEP R2, and NCEP CFSR reanalyses datasets. Pressure level data are available for most reanalyses, as well as 5 single level variables including sea level pressure, 2 m air temperature, 10 m winds, precipitation. Maps and pressure-level by longitude and pressure-level by latitude can be generated for monthly means, anomalies, and climatologies. Observational datasets have been made available that can be compared to 2m air temperature and precipitation. These quantities can be differenced between datasets.

Future enhancements include different time scales.

is also available from WRIT. It allows users to examine 20CR, ERA-Interim, ERA-20C, JRA-55, MERRA, MERRA-2, NCEP R1,  NCEP R2, and NCEP-CFSR as well as some observational dataset. Users can compare timeseries from different datasets, regions, variables and levels. Distributions, scatter plots, and auto-correlation are also available. Statistics for each timeseries including means, standaed deviations, slope and correlations are provided.

The "WRIT" Trajectory Tool is a new tool available from WRIT. It allows users to plot forward and backward trajectories from different reanalyses (currently NCEP R1, NCEP R2, and 20CR with more planned). Users can plot  the trajectories of one or more levels on a single plot. The output is plotted and is available as netCDF and as KMZ files suitable for Google Earth.

Other analysis products are planned.

Feedback and suggestions are welcome. Please give comments/issues/suggestions in the Post a comment or question below.

Acknowledgments

The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project (20CR) used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which are supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 and Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725, respectively. Support is provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (DOE INCITE) program, and Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), and by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Program Office. Data are freely available from NOAA, NCAR, the IRI, KNMI, and DOE NERSC.

NASA's Modern Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) was developed by the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) and produced through NASA's Modeling, Analysis and Prediction (MAP) program, and is freely available from the Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data Information Services center (DISC).

NCEP's Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) was developed by the Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) and was partially funded through the NOAA Climate Program Office. It is available free to the public from both NCDC and NCAR.

The ERA-Interim reanalysis is being produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Reading, UK. ERA-Interim data with near-real time updates are freely available from the ECMWF data server and from the CISL Data Archive at NCAR. 

WRIT contributes to the Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) Initiative.

WRIT is supported in part by NOAA and by the US Department of Energy Office of Science (BER).