[1] Correlations between various chemical species simulated by the Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model, a general circulation model with fully interactive chemistry, are considered in order to investigate the general conditions under which compact correlations can be expected to form. At the same time, the analysis serves to validate the model. The results are compared to previous work on this subject, both from theoretical studies and from atmospheric measurements made from space and from aircraft. The results highlight the importance of having a data set with good spatial coverage when working with correlations and provide a background against which the compactness of correlations obtained from atmospheric measurements can be confirmed. It is shown that for long-lived species, distinct correlations are found in the model in the tropics, the extratropics, and the Antarctic winter vortex. Under these conditions, sparse sampling such as arises from occultation instruments is nevertheless suitable to define a chemical correlation within each region even from a single day of measurements, provided a sufficient range of mixing ratio values is sampled. In practice, this means a large vertical extent, though the requirements are less stringent at more poleward latitudes.
Recent high‐resolution radiosonde climatologies have revealed a tropopause inversion layer (TIL) in the extratropics: temperature strongly increases just above a sharp local cold point tropopause. Here, it is asked to what extent a TIL exists in current general circulation models (GCMs) and meteorological analyses. Only a weak hint of a TIL exists in NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data. In contrast, the Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model (CMAM), a comprehensive GCM, exhibits a TIL of realistic strength. However, in data assimilation mode CMAM exhibits a much weaker TIL, especially in the Southern Hemisphere where only coarse satellite data are available. The discrepancy between the analyses and the GCM is thus hypothesized to be mainly due to data assimilation acting to smooth the observed strong curvature in temperature around the tropopause. This is confirmed in the reanalysis where the stratification around the tropopause exhibits a strong discontinuity at the start of the satellite era.
[1] Three-dimensional data assimilation schemes typically produce analyses that are not in balance. This is evidenced by the generation of spurious high-frequency waves during the first 2 d of forecasts which start from analyses. To remove these spurious waves, assimilation systems frequently filter analyses before using them in models. This work examines the behavior of various spurious wave filtering methods in the context of a model with a mesosphere. Since gravity waves comprise a significant portion of the mesospheric energy spectrum, it is necessary to retain naturally occurring high-frequency waves while filtering spurious waves. The results show that filtering the full analysis state can remove many important high-frequency oscillations from the mesosphere. On the other hand, filtering analysis increments preserves much more of the natural variability of the model. The incremental analysis updating scheme and the incremental digital filter, which are equivalent for linear models and identical coefficients, are shown to give very similar results in the context of a realistic nonlinear model. Results also show a nonlocal response to the insertion of analysis increments in the troposphere and stratosphere. The global mean temperature in the vicinity of the model lid and the diurnal tidal amplitudes are sensitive to the choice of filtering schemes because the filters reduce the amount of resolved waves available to propagate upward into mesosphere. This sensitivity of the mesosphere to the filtering of the lower atmosphere is exploited to choose an optimal filter for our system using measurements of the mesosphere.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.