The advective Brewer–Dobson circulation in the ERA5 reanalysis: climatology, variability, and trends

Diallo, Mohamadou; Ern, Manfred; Ploeger, Felix

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-7515-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-7515-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

The SPARC Reanalysis Intercomparison Project (S-RIP) (ACP/ESSD...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-7515-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 10

Research article

|

18 May 2021

Research article |

| 18 May 2021

The advective Brewer–Dobson circulation in the ERA5 reanalysis: climatology, variability, and trends

Mohamadou Diallo, Manfred Ern, and Felix Ploeger

Data sets

The ERA5 Global Reanalysis (https://apps.ecmwf.int/data-catalogues/era5/?class=ea) H. Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.3803

The ERA-Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation system (https://apps.ecmwf.int/archive-catalogue/?class=ei) D. P. Dee et al. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.828

Short summary

Despite good agreement in the spatial structure, there are substantial differences in the strength of the Brewer–Dobson circulation (BDC) and its modulations in the UTLS and upper stratosphere. The tropical upwelling is generally weaker in ERA5 than in ERAI due to weaker planetary and gravity wave breaking in the UTLS. Analysis of the BDC trend shows an acceleration of the BDC of about 1.5 % decade^-1 due to the long-term intensification in wave breaking, consistent with climate predictions.