Comparing Gravity Waves in a Kilometre-Scale Run of the IFS to AIRS Satellite Observations and ERA5

Emily Lear; Corwin J. Wright; Neil Hindley; Inna Polichtchouk; Lars Hoffmann

doi:10.1029/2023JD040097

Comparing Gravity Waves in a Kilometre-Scale Run of the IFS to AIRS Satellite Observations and ERA5

Emily Lear, Corwin J. Wright, Neil Hindley, Inna Polichtchouk, Lars Hoffmann

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

3 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Atmospheric gravity waves (GWs) impact the circulation and variability of the atmosphere. Sub-grid scale GWs, which are too small to be resolved, are parameterized in weather and climate models. However, some models are now available at resolutions at which these waves become resolved and it is important to test whether these models do this correctly. In this study, a GW resolving run of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Integrated Forecasting System (IFS), run with a 1.4 km average grid spacing (TCo7999 resolution), is compared to observations from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument, on NASA's Aqua satellite, to test how well the model resolves GWs that AIRS can observe. In this analysis, nighttime data are used from the first 10 days of November 2018 over part of Asia and surrounding regions. The IFS run is resampled with AIRS's observational filter using two different methods for comparison. The ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis is also resampled as AIRS, to allow for comparison of how the high resolution IFS run resolves GWs compared to a lower resolution model that uses GW drag parametrizations. Wave properties are found in AIRS and the resampled models using a multi-dimensional S-Transform method. Orographic GWs can be seen in similar locations at similar times in all three data sets. However, wave amplitudes and momentum fluxes in the resampled IFS run are found to be significantly lower than in the observations. This could be a result of horizontal and vertical wavelengths in the IFS run being underestimated

Original language	English
Article number	e2023JD040097
Number of pages	22
Journal	Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
Volume	129
Issue number	11
Early online date	5 Jun 2024
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JD040097
Publication status	Published - 16 Jun 2024

Data Availability Statement

The AIRS temperature data used in the study were computed from AIRS radiances using the retrieval schemedescribed in Hoffmann and Alexander (2009). The 3D AIRS temperature retrieval can be obtained from https://datapub.fz‐juelich.de/slcs/airs/gravity_waves/data/retrieval/ (Hoffmann, 2021). The ECMWF ERA5 reanalysisdata at 0.25° resolution (Copernicus Climate Change Service, 2023) can be downloaded from the CopernicusClimate Data Store at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/10.24381/cds.bd0915c6?tab=overview.For the 1 km IFS run, the size of the raw model output on the native grid is a few hundred TB, so it is not possiblefor all of the data to be made available. However, the post processed data will be retained and is available onrequest. Code written in MATLAB (available at https://uk.mathworks.com/products/matlab.html) was used toresample the models as AIRS, analyze the GW properties and produce the figures. The MATLAB code used isavailable at Lear (2024)

Funding

The high resolution IFS simulation (TCo7999) used in this study was performed using the resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. The grants which supported this work include Royal Society Research Grant RGF\\R1\\180010 supporting E. J. Lear and C. J. Wright, Royal Society Research Fellowships UF160545 and URF\\R\\221023 supporting C. J. Wright, and NERC Grants NE/W003201/1 and NE/S00985X/1 supporting C. J. Wright and N. Hindley. C Wright, N Hindley, and I Polichtchouk's contribution to this work was supported by the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern, through ISSI International Team project #567. The authors would like to thank L. A. Holt for helpful discussions related to the interpretation of the 8\u00A0\u03BCm AIRS brightness data.

Funders	Funder number
International Space Science Institute
Natural Environment Research Council	NE/W003201/1, NE/S00985X/1
Natural Environment Research Council
Royal Society	UF160545, URF\R\221023, RGF\R1\180010
Royal Society
DOE Office of Science	DE‐AC05‐00OR22725
DOE Office of Science

Keywords

gravity waves
models
satellite observations
stratosphere

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Geophysics
Atmospheric Science
Space and Planetary Science
Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous)

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1029/2023JD040097Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "Atmospheric gravity waves (GWs) impact the circulation and variability of the atmosphere. Sub-grid scale GWs, which are too small to be resolved, are parameterized in weather and climate models. However, some models are now available at resolutions at which these waves become resolved and it is important to test whether these models do this correctly. In this study, a GW resolving run of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Integrated Forecasting System (IFS), run with a 1.4 km average grid spacing (TCo7999 resolution), is compared to observations from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument, on NASA's Aqua satellite, to test how well the model resolves GWs that AIRS can observe. In this analysis, nighttime data are used from the first 10 days of November 2018 over part of Asia and surrounding regions. The IFS run is resampled with AIRS's observational filter using two different methods for comparison. The ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis is also resampled as AIRS, to allow for comparison of how the high resolution IFS run resolves GWs compared to a lower resolution model that uses GW drag parametrizations. Wave properties are found in AIRS and the resampled models using a multi-dimensional S-Transform method. Orographic GWs can be seen in similar locations at similar times in all three data sets. However, wave amplitudes and momentum fluxes in the resampled IFS run are found to be significantly lower than in the observations. This could be a result of horizontal and vertical wavelengths in the IFS run being underestimated",

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PY - 2024/6/16

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N2 - Atmospheric gravity waves (GWs) impact the circulation and variability of the atmosphere. Sub-grid scale GWs, which are too small to be resolved, are parameterized in weather and climate models. However, some models are now available at resolutions at which these waves become resolved and it is important to test whether these models do this correctly. In this study, a GW resolving run of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Integrated Forecasting System (IFS), run with a 1.4 km average grid spacing (TCo7999 resolution), is compared to observations from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument, on NASA's Aqua satellite, to test how well the model resolves GWs that AIRS can observe. In this analysis, nighttime data are used from the first 10 days of November 2018 over part of Asia and surrounding regions. The IFS run is resampled with AIRS's observational filter using two different methods for comparison. The ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis is also resampled as AIRS, to allow for comparison of how the high resolution IFS run resolves GWs compared to a lower resolution model that uses GW drag parametrizations. Wave properties are found in AIRS and the resampled models using a multi-dimensional S-Transform method. Orographic GWs can be seen in similar locations at similar times in all three data sets. However, wave amplitudes and momentum fluxes in the resampled IFS run are found to be significantly lower than in the observations. This could be a result of horizontal and vertical wavelengths in the IFS run being underestimated

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Comparing Gravity Waves in a Kilometre-Scale Run of the IFS to AIRS Satellite Observations and ERA5

Abstract

Data Availability Statement

Funding

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

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Searching for Upper Atmospheric Waves at the Edge of Space (SURGE)

Cite this

Comparing Gravity Waves in a Kilometre-Scale Run of the IFS to AIRS Satellite Observations and ERA5

Abstract

Data Availability Statement

Funding

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Projects

Searching for Upper Atmospheric Waves at the Edge of Space (SURGE)

Cite this