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Climate Diagnostics - Most Recent Papers, 2007 to present
- Ploshay, Jeff J., and Ngar-Cheung Lau, September 2010: Simulation of the diurnal cycle in tropical rainfall and circulation during Boreal summer with a high-resolution GCM. Monthly Weather Review, 138(9), 3434-3453.
- Lau, Ngar-Cheung, and Mary Jo Nath, September 2009: A
model investigation of the role of air-sea interaction in the
climatological evolution and ENSO-related variability of the summer
monsoon over the South China Sea and western North Pacific. Journal of Climate, 22(18), 4771-4792.
- Lau, N.-C., and J. J. Ploshay, February 2009: Simulation
of synoptic- and subsynoptic-scale phenomena associated with the East
Asian summer monsoon using a high-resolution GCM. Monthly Weather Review, 137(1), 137-160.
[ Abstract PDF ]
- Wang, B, N.-C. Lau, A. Rosati, and W. F Stern, et al., July 2009: Advance
and prospectus of seasonal prediction: Assessment of the APCC/CliPAS
14-model ensemble retrospective seasonal prediction (1980-2004). Climate Dynamics, 33(1), 93-117.
[ Abstract PDF ]
- LinHo, L H., X Huang, and N.-C. Lau, 2008: Winter-to-spring transition in East Asia: A planetary-scale perspective of the South China spring rain onset. Journal of Climate, 21(13), 3081-3096.
[ PDF ]
- Jiang, X, and N.-C. Lau, 2008: Intraseasonal teleconnection between North American and western North Pacific monsoons with 20-day time scale. Journal of Climate, 21(11), doi:10.1175/2007JCLI2024.1.
- Lau, N.-C., A. Leetma, and M. J. Nath, February 2008: Interactions
between the responses of North American climate to El Niño–La Niña and
to the secular warming trend in the Indian–Western Pacific Oceans. Journal of Climate, 21(3), 476-494.
[ PDF ]
- Jiang, X, N.-C. Lau, I. Held, and J. J. Ploshay, January 2007: Mechanisms of the Great Plains low-level jet as simulated in an AGCM. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 64(2), 532-547.
[ PDF ]
- Thorne, P W., John R Lanzante, T C Peterson, D J Seidel, and K P Shine, January 2011: Tropospheric temperature trends: History of an ongoing controversy. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2(1), doi:10.1002/wcc.80 .
- Free, M, and John R Lanzante, June 2009: Effect of volcanic eruptions on the vertical temperature profile in radiosonde data and climate models. Journal of Climate, 22(11), doi:10.1175/2008JCLI2562.1
- Lanzante, John R., June 2009: Comment on “Trends in the temperature and water vapor content of the tropical lower stratosphere: Sea surface connection” by Karen H. Rosenlof and George C. Reid. Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D12104, doi:10.1029/2008JD010542
Both
observed and modeled upper-air temperature profiles show the
tropospheric cooling and tropical stratospheric warming effects from
the three major volcanic eruptions since 1960. Detailed comparisons of
vertical profiles of Radiosonde Atmospheric Temperature Products for
Assessing Climate (RATPAC) and Hadley Centre Atmospheric Temperatures,
Version 2 (HadAT2) radiosonde temperatures with output from 6 coupled
GCMs show good overall agreement on the responses to the 1991 Pinatubo
and 1982 El Chichon eruptions in the troposphere and stratosphere, with
a tendency of the models to underestimate the upper tropospheric
cooling and overestimate the stratospheric warming relative to
observations. Furthermore, the level of maximum stratospheric volcanic
warming does not always correspond between models and observations. In
addition, models and observations show a large disagreement at 100 hPa
for Pinatubo in the tropics, where observations show essentially no
change, while models show significant warming of ~0.7 to ~2.6 K. This
difference occurs even in models that accurately simulate stratospheric
warming at 50 hPa. Most models overestimate the tropospheric cooling
effect of the 1963 Agung eruption in the tropics and underestimate it
in the Southern Hemisphere extratropics, but uncertainties in the
observations and the volcanic forcings make meaningful comparisons
difficult for that eruption. Overall, the Parallel Climate Model (PCM)
is an outlier in that it simulates more volcanic-induced stratospheric
warming than both the other models and the observations in most cases.
Results for all three eruptions are sensitive to the methods used to
remove ENSO effects. The cooling effect at the surface in the tropics
is amplified with altitude in the troposphere in both observations and
models, but this amplification is greater for the observations than for
the models. In contrast, amplification for the ENSO signal in the
models is more similar to that in the observations. Estimates of the
effect of the eruptions on temperature trends are dependent on the
method used and the choice of parameters for these methods. From 1979
to 1999 in the tropics, RATPAC shows a trend of less than 0.1 K/decade
at and above 300 hPa while the mean of the models used here has a trend
of more than 0.3 K/decade, giving a difference of ~0.2 K/decade. From
0.02 to 0.08 K/decade of this difference may be due to the influence of
volcanic eruptions, with the smaller estimate appearing more likely
than the larger. In the lower troposphere, none of the difference in
trends appears to be attributable to volcanic effects.
- Lanzante, John R., and M Free, October 2008: Comparison of radiosonde and GCM vertical temperature trend profiles: Effects of dataset choice and data homogenization. Journal of Climate, 21(20), 5417-5435.
[ PDF ]
- Santer, B. D., P. W. Thorne, L. Haimberger, K. E. Taylor, T. M. L. Wigley, J. R. Lanzante, S. Solomon, M. Free, P. J. Gleckler, P. D. Jones, T. R. Karl, S. A. Klein, C. Mears, D. Nychka, G. A. Schmidt, S. C. Sherwood, and F. J. Wentz, October 2008: Consistency of modelled and observed temperature trends in the tropical troposphere. International Journal of Climatology, 28(13), 1703-1722.
[ PDF ]
- Lanzante, John R., 2007: Diagnosis
of Radiosonde Vertical Temperature Trend Profiles: Comparing the
Influence of Data Homogenization versus Model Forcings. Journal of Climate, 20(21), 5356-5364.
[ PDF ]
