Reanalysis Tropopause Data Sets

Description

This data repository provides access to tropopause parameters estimated from meteorological reanalyses. The tropopause data sets have been created using meteorological reanalyses distributed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and the National Centers for Atmospheric Prediction (NCEP).

Currently, the repository covers the following data sets:

• ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis (full resolution) for the years 2001 to 2022
• ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis (low resolution) for the years 1979 to 2022
• ECMWF ERA-Interim reanalysis for the years 1979 to 2019
• NASA MERRA-2 reanalysis for the years 1980 to 2022
• NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis-1 for the years 1948 to 2022

The data are provided in form of daily netCDF files on a regular longitude-latitude grid and temporal sampling matching the native resolution of the corresponding reanalysis data sets. The tropopause data files include geopotential height, pressure, temperature, and water vapor volume mixing ratio for the first and second thermal lapse rate tropopause (WMO definition), the cold point (local temperature minimum), and the dynamical tropopause (380 K potential temperature in the tropics and 3.5 potential vorticity units in the extratropics).

Reference

Citation, if the data are used in publications:

Hoffmann, L. and Spang, R.: An assessment of tropopause characteristics of the ERA5 and ERA-Interim meteorological reanalyses, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 4019-4046, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-4019-2022, 2022.

Data access

The tropopause data sets can be found in this directory:

/p/fastdata/slmet/slmet111/met_data/tropo

License

The data sets are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Contact

Lars Hoffmann (l.hoffmann@fz-juelich.de)