J. Fidel Gonzalez-Rouco

Surface wind regionalization over complex terrain: Evaluation and analysis of a high-resolution WRF simulation

This study analyzes the daily-mean surface wind variability over an area characterized by complex topography through comparing observations and a 2-km-spatial-resolution simulation performed with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model for the period 1992–2005. The evaluation focuses on the performance of the simulation to reproduce the wind variability within subregions identified from observations over the 1999–2002 period in a previous study. By comparing with wind observations, the model results show the ability of the WRF dynamical downscaling over a region of complex terrain. The higher spatiotemporal resolution of the WRF simulation is used to evaluate the extent to which the length of the observational period and the limited spatial coverage of observations condition one’s understanding of the wind variability over the area. The subregions identified with the simulation during the 1992–2005 period are similar to those identified with observations (1999–2002). In addition, the reduced number of stations reasonably represents the spatial wind variability over the area. However, the analysis of the full spatial dimension simulated by the model suggests that observational coverage could be improved in some subregions. The approach adopted here can have a direct application to the design of observational networks.

Quality assurance of surface wind observations from automated weather stations

Abstract Meteorological data of good quality are important for understanding both global and regional climates. In this respect, great efforts have been made to evaluate temperature- and precipitation-related records. This study summarizes the evaluations made to date of the quality of wind speed and direction records acquired at 41 automated weather stations in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. Observations were acquired from 1992 to 2005 at a temporal resolution of 10 and 30 min. A quality assurance system was imposed to screen the records for 1) manipulation errors associated with storage and management of the data, 2) consistency limits to ensure that observations are within their natural limits of variation, and 3) temporal consistency to assess abnormally low/high variations in the individual time series. In addition, the most important biases of the dataset are analyzed and corrected wherever possible. A total of 1.8% wind speed and 3.7% wind direction records was assumed invalid, pointing to...

Effects of bottom boundary placement on subsurface heat storage: Implications for climate model simulations

1.0 � 10 23 Joules during a 110-year simulation with a 10 m bottom boundary. The calculations are relevant for GCM projections that employ land-surface components with shallow bottom boundary conditions, typically ranging between 3 to 10 m. These shallow boundary conditions preclude a large amount of heat from being stored in the terrestrial subsurface, possibly allocating heat to other parts of the simulated climate system. The results show that climate models of any complexity should consider the potential for subsurface heat storage whenever choosing a bottom boundary condition in simulations of future climate change. Citation: Stevens, M. B., J. E. Smerdon, J. F.

North American climate of the last millennium: Underground temperatures and model comparison

General circulation models (GCMs) are currently able to provide physically consistent simulations of millennial climate variability in which estimations of external forcing factors are incorporated as boundary conditions. Climate reconstruction attempts to recover as faithfully as possible past climate variability using a variety of independent and climate-sensitive sources of information. By deriving strategies of comparison between GCM simulations and proxy data, or directly recorded data such as subsurface thermal profiles, the agreement between model and observations can be assessed. Thermal profiles obtained from the boreholes of North America were grouped into eight geographically discrete ensembles and averaged to form robust, representative profiles. The gridded output from the three distinct integrations of the GCM ECHO-g were similarly averaged by region. These simulated, millennial, paleoclimatic histories were then forward modeled to arrive at the subsurface thermal profiles that would result from the temperature trends at the surface. These forward modeled profiles were then compared with the borehole average thermal anomaly profile in each region. In most of the regions studied, the externally forced runs from ECHO-g are in better agreement with underground temperature anomalies than with the control run, suggesting that boreholes are sensitive to external forcing. Not only do ECHO-g simulations demonstrate better agreement with borehole data when considering variable external forcing factors, but ECHO-g also appears to broadly describe qualitative aspects of long-term climatic trends at a regional scale.

Continental-Scale Temperature Variability during the Past Two Millennia: Supplementary Information

Past global climate changes had strong regional expression. To elucidate their spatio-temporal pattern, we reconstructed past temperatures for seven continental-scale regions during the past one to two millennia. The most coherent feature in nearly all of the regional temperature reconstructions is a long-term cooling trend, which ended late in the nineteenth century. At multi-decadal to centennial scales, temperature variability shows distinctly different regional patterns, with more similarity within each hemisphere than between them. There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, but all reconstructions show generally cold conditions between ad 1580 and 1880, punctuated in some regions by warm decades during the eighteenth century. The transition to these colder conditions occurred earlier in the Arctic, Europe and Asia than in North America or the Southern Hemisphere regions. Recent warming reversed the long-term cooling; during the period ad 1971–2000, the area-weighted average reconstructed temperature was higher than any other time in nearly 1,400 years.

Atlantic and Mediterranean synoptic drivers of central Spanish juniper growth

Atlantic and Mediterranean air masses influence the climate over the Iberian System mountain range. The relatively short instrumental records in central Spain though limit any long-term assessment of these synoptic systems. We here evaluate the potential to analyze such changes using ring width data from Juniperus thurifera trees growing in the northwestern and southeastern regions of the Iberian System, exposed to Atlantic and Mediterranean cyclonic activity, respectively. Comparison of tree rings with regional precipitation, temperature, and Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) data indicates that juniper trees contain information on late spring and early summer drought conditions. Calibration trials using spatially resolved, gridded climate data reveal that the northwestern sampling site is predominantly controlled by Atlantic weather, while the southeastern site mainly reflects Mediterranean climate patterns. The strength and position of the blocking Azores high during spring to early summer is of particular importance for the distinct growth reactions in the Iberian System. The climate signal is remarkably strong in the southeastern site, where we developed the longest and best-replicated juniper tree ring record of the Iberian Peninsula. Data from this site allowed the reconstruction of May-June PDSI variability back to the early eighteenth century, indicating severe drought (PDSIu2009<u2009−9) in southeastern Spain in 1782, 1828, 1869, 1981, and 2005. The new PDSI record coheres well with historical rogation ceremony data from eastern Spain, indicating that common information on past drought events is inherent in both proxy archives.

Comment on "Robustness of proxy-based climate field reconstruction methods" by Michael E. Mann et al.

] Mann et al. [2007a] (hereafter M07a) test the climatefield reconstruction (CFR) method known as regularizedexpectation maximization (RegEM) using pseudoproxiesderived from millennial simulations of past climate. Thesesimulations were derived from two General CirculationModels (GCMs) driven with natural and anthropogenicforcings: the National Center for Atmospheric ResearchClimate System Model (CSM) [Boville et al., 2001] andthe Hamburg Atmosphere-Ocean Coupled CirculationModel (ECHO-g) [Legutke and Voss, 1999]. There has beensome discussion about the amplitude of millennial changesin simulations from these two GCMs [Goosse et al., 2005;Mann et al., 2005; Osborn et al., 2006; Gonza´lez-Rouco etal., 2006], particularly with regard to how it may impact theassessment of CFR methods in pseudoproxy experiments[Mannetal.,2005;Mann,2007;Zoritaetal.,2007;Mannetal., 2007a, 2007b].[

Quantification of subsurface heat storage in a GCM simulation

[1]xa0Shallow bottom boundary conditions (BBCs) in the soil components of general circulation models (GCMs) impose artificial limits on subsurface heat storage. To assess this problem we estimate the subsurface heat content from two future climate simulations and compare to that obtained from an offline soil model (FDLSM) driven by GCM skin temperatures. FDLSM is then used as an offline substitute for the subsurface of the GCM ECHO-G. With a 600-m BBC and driven by ECHO-G future temperatures, the FDLSM subsurface absorbs 6.2 (7.5) times more heat than the ECHO-G soil model (10 m deep) under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) A2 (B2) emission scenario. This suggests that shallow BBCs in GCM simulations may underestimate the heat stored in the subsurface, particularly for northern high latitudes. This effect could be relevant in assessing the energy balance and climate change in the next century.

Analysis of the long-term surface wind variability over complex terrain using a high spatial resolution WRF simulation

This work uses a WRF numerical simulation from 1960 to 2005 performed at a high horizontal resolution (2xa0km) to analyze the surface wind variability over a complex terrain region located in northern Iberia. A shorter slice of this simulation has been used in a previous study to demonstrate the ability of the WRF model in reproducing the observed wind variability during the period 1992–2005. Learning from that validation exercise, the extended simulation is herein used to inspect the wind behavior where and when observations are not available and to determine the main synoptic mechanisms responsible for the surface wind variability. A principal component analysis was applied to the daily mean wind. Two principal modes of variation accumulate a large percentage of the wind variability (83.7%). The first mode reflects the channeling of the flow between the large mountain systems in northern Iberia modulated by the smaller topographic features of the region. The second mode further contributes to stress the differentiated wind behavior over the mountains and valleys. Both modes show significant contributions at the higher frequencies during the whole analyzed period, with different contributions at lower frequencies during the different decades. A strong relationship was found between these two modes and the zonal and meridional large scale pressure gradients over the area. This relationship is described in the context of the influence of standard circulation modes relevant in the European region like the North Atlantic Oscillation, the East Atlantic pattern, East Atlantic/Western Russia pattern, and the Scandinavian pattern.

Comparison of observed and general circulation model derived continental subsurface heat flux in the Northern Hemisphere

Received 8 September 2009; revised 9 February 2010; accepted 19 February 2010; published 18 June 2010. [1] Heat fluxes in the continental subsurface were estimated from general circulation model (GCM) simulations of the climate of the last millennium and compared to those obtained from subsurface geothermal data. Since GCMs have bottom boundary conditions (BBCs) that are less than 10 m deep and thus may be thermodynamically restricted in the continental subsurface, we used an idealized land surface model (LSM) with a very deep BBC to estimate the potential for realistic subsurface heat storage in the absence of bottom boundary constraints. Results indicate that there is good agreement between observed fluxes and GCM simulated fluxes for the 1780–1980 period when the GCM simulated temperatures are coupled to the LSM with deep BBC. These results emphasize the importance of placing a deep BBC in GCM soil components for the proper simulation of the overall continental heat budget. In addition, the agreement between the LSM surface fluxes and the borehole temperature reconstructed fluxes lends additional support to the overall quality of the GCM (ECHO‐G) paleoclimatic simulations. Citation: MacDougall, A. H., H. Beltrami, J. F. Gonzalez‐Rouco, M. B. Stevens, and E. Bourlon (2010), Comparison of observed and general circulation model derived continental subsurface heat flux in the Northern Hemisphere, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D12109, doi:10.1029/2009JD013170.