20CR Status

For long term climate applications, 20CR should be a good option. Hopefully we will compare and contrast with MERRA soon. Here is the latest status from 20CR:

14 July 2010

Dear Colleagues,

Global four-times-daily atmospheric and surface fields spanning 1871 to 2008 from the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project version 2 dataset are now available. They can be obtained in GRIB format via our partners at the National Center for Atmospheric Research http://dss.ucar.edu/datasets/ds131.1, and are also available at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.20thC_ReanV2.html in netCDF format, courtesy of our partners at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Physical Sciences Division (PSD), and University of Colorado CIRES/Climate Diagnostics Center (CDC). They will also become available via our partners at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) through the NOAA Operational Model Archive and Distribution System (NOMADS) http://nomads.ncdc.noaa.gov in the near future. Beta composite plotting tools for 4-times-daily, daily and monthly means are now available courtesy of Cathy Smith of NOAA/ESRL/PSD and CU/CIRES/CDC at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/20thC_Rean/.

Additionally, pre-generated synoptic maps showing the ensemble mean analysis and analysis uncertainty of Sea Level Pressure and 500 hPa height over the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere and for Sea Level Pressure and 850 hPa zonal wind in the tropics are available at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/20thC_Rean/hem_images.html.

Example animations of the Galveston hurricane of 1900 are available courtesy of NCAR at http://dss.ucar.edu/datasets/ds131.1/docs/galveston/Galveston1900.avi and for the Science on a Sphere visualization platform courtesy of Cathy Smith and Beth Russell at http://sos.noaa.gov/datasets/Atmosphere/reanalysis.html

A brief description of the project is given below. Please also visit the project home page at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/20thC_Rean/. A journal article describing the dataset has been submitted to the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society at their invitation:
Compo, G.P., J.S. Whitaker, P.D. Sardeshmukh, N. Matsui, R.J. Allan, X. Yin, B.E. Gleason, R.S. Vose, G. Rutledge, P. Bessemoulin, S. Brönnimann, M. Brunet, R.I. Crouthamel, A.N. Grant, P.Y. Groisman, P.D. Jones, M.C. Kruk, A.C. Kruger, G.J. Marshall, M. Maugeri, H.Y. Mok, Ø. Nordli, T.F. Ross, R.M. Trigo, X.L. Wang, S.D. Woodruff, S.J. Worley, 2009: The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project. Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., submitted. Available online at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/gilbert.p.compo/20CRv2_Compoetal2010.pdf

Please feel free to contact the Project Leads, Gil Compo compo at colorado.edu and Jeff Whitaker Jeffrey.S.Whitaker at noaa.gov, with questions.