The stratospheric Brewer–Dobson circulation inferred from age of air in the ERA5 reanalysis

Ploeger, Felix; Diallo, Mohamadou; Charlesworth, Edward; Konopka, Paul; Legras, Bernard; Laube, Johannes C.; Grooß, Jens-Uwe; Günther, Gebhard; Engel, Andreas; Riese, Martin

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-8393-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-8393-2021

© 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-21-8393-2021

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

Articles | Volume 21, issue 11

Research article

|

02 Jun 2021

Research article |

| 02 Jun 2021

The stratospheric Brewer–Dobson circulation inferred from age of air in the ERA5 reanalysis

Felix Ploeger, Mohamadou Diallo, Edward Charlesworth, Paul Konopka, Bernard Legras, Johannes C. Laube, Jens-Uwe Grooß, Gebhard Günther, Andreas Engel, and Martin Riese

Data sets

The ERA5 global reanalysis (https://apps.ecmwf.int/data-catalogues/era5/?class=ea) Hans Hersbach, Bill Bell, Paul Berrisford, Shoji Hirahara, András Horányi, Joaquín Muñoz-Sabater, Julien Nicolas, Carole Peubey, Raluca Radu, Dinand Schepers, Adrian Simmons, Cornel Soci, Saleh Abdalla, Xavier Abellan, Gianpaolo Balsamo, Peter Bechtold, Gionata Biavati, Jean Bidlot, Massimo Bonavita, Giovanna De Chiara, Per Dahlgren, Dick Dee, Michail Diamantakis, Rossana Dragani, Johannes Flemming, Richard Forbes, Manuel Fuentes, Alan Geer, Leo Haimberger, Sean Healy, Robin J. Hogan, Elías Hólm, Marta Janisková, Sarah Keeley, Patrick Laloyaux, Philippe Lopez, Cristina Lupu, Gabor Radnoti, Patricia de Rosnay, Iryna Rozum, Freja Vamborg, Sebastien Villaume, and Jean-Noël Thépaut 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, S. M. Uppala, A. J. Simmons, P. Berrisford, P. Poli, S. Kobayashi, U. Andrae, M. A. Balmaseda, G. Balsamo, P. Bauer, P. Bechtold, A. C. M. Beljaars, L. van de Berg, J. Bidlot, N. Bormann, C. Delsol, R. Dragani, M. Fuentes, A. J. Geer, L. Haimberger, S. B. Healy, H. Hersbach, E. V. Hólm, L. Isaksen, P. Kållberg, M. Köhler, M. Matricardi, A. P. McNally, B. M. Monge-Sanz, J.-J. Morcrette, B.-K. Park, C. Peubey, P. de Rosnay, C. Tavolato, J.-N. Thépaut, and F. Vitart https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.828

Short summary

We investigate the global stratospheric circulation (Brewer–Dobson circulation) in the new ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis based on age of air simulations, and we compare it to results from the preceding ERA-Interim reanalysis. Our results show a slower stratospheric circulation and higher age for ERA5. The age of air trend in ERA5 over the 1989–2018 period is negative throughout the stratosphere, related to multi-annual variability and a potential contribution from changes in the reanalysis system.