Wind kinetic energy climatology and effective resolution for the ERA5 reanalysis

• Published in: Climate Dynamics
• Main Authors: Bolgiani, Pedro, Calvo Sancho, Carlos, Díaz Fernández, Javier, Quitián Hernández, Lara, Sastre Marugán, Mariano, Santos Muñoz, Daniel, Farrán Martín, José Ignacio, González Alemán, Juan Jesús, Valero, Francisco, Martín Pérez, María Luisa
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Springer 2022
• Subjects: Energy spectrum; Effective resolution; Climatology; ERA5; 25 Ciencias de la Tierra y del Espacio; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/52257; https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06154-y

Producción Científica ERA5 represents the state of the art for atmospheric reanalyses and is widely used in meteorological and climatological research. In this work, this dataset is evaluated using the wind kinetic energy spectrum. Seasonal climatologies are generated for 30° latitudinal bands in the Northern Hemisphere (periodic domain) and over the North Atlantic area (limited-area domain). The spectra are also assessed to determine the effective resolution of the reanalysis. The results present notable differences between the latitudinal domains, indicating that ERA5 is properly capturing the synoptic conditions. The seasonal variability is adequate too, being winter the most energetic, and summer the least energetic season. The limited area domain results introduce a larger energy density and range. Despite the good results for the synoptic scales, the reanalysis’ spectra are not able to properly reproduce the dissipation rates at mesoscale. This is a source of uncertainties which needs to be taken into account when using the dataset. Finally, a cyclone tropical transition is presented as a case study. The spectrum generated shows a clear difference in energy density at every wavelength, as expected for a highly-energetic status of the atmosphere. Ministerio de Asuntos Económicos y Transformación Digital y Universidad Complutense de Madrid (projects: (PID2019-105306RB-I00 (IBER - CANES), CGL2016-78702 (SAFEFLIGHT), PCIN-2016-080 and FEI-EU-17-16) Publicación en abierto financiada por el Consorcio de Bibliotecas Universitarias de Castilla y León (BUCLE), con cargo al Programa Operativo 2014ES16RFOP009 FEDER 2014-2020 DE CASTILLA Y LEÓN, Actuación:20007-CL - Apoyo Consorcio BUCLE