Reanalysis Precipitation Climatology

On the MERRA WWW page, we are posting several figures showing the comparison of 5 satellite era reanalyses with GPCP and CMAP precipitation data sets. There are some similarities among the reanalyses, in their differences from the observations (Tropical precipitation, and interestingly European continental January precipitation), but also differences between the merged observation data sets (GPCP has lower tropical precipitation than CMAP, but higher January precipitation, in general). Citations are provided on the page, that provide some analysis and discussion on the sources of bias. However, there are many other aspects in comparing reanalyses to the observed data. These are only climatologies, so that interanual variability, weather scale and diurnal cycle differences are not expanded.

The WWW page is at: http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/research/merra/reanalysis_precipitation_climatology.php

Please take a look, and feel free to make comments on this blog.