NCEP-NCAR and ECMWF Reanalysis Surface Water and Energy Budgets for the Mississippi River Basin

Surface water and energy budgets from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction‐National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP‐NCAR) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalyses are compared here with each other and with available observations over the Mississippi River basin, which is a focus of the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment Continental-Scale International Project. There are a number of noticeable differences and similarities in the large-scale basin averages. The NCEP‐ NCAR reanalysis seasonal precipitation and runoff are larger than the available observations; presumably, evaporation and surface water variations also are too large. The ECMWF reanalysis precipitation is much closer to the observations, whereas the corresponding surface runoff and seasonal surface water variations are too small. The NCEP‐NCAR and ECMWF reanalysis seasonal energy components are more similar to each other. The NCEP‐NCAR and ECMWF interannual variations also are comparable, indicating that these reanalyses probably can be used to begin to study interannual variations. Nonetheless, improved land surface parameterizations are needed to depict surface water and energy processes and, in particular, variations in seasonal surface water and runoff better.

[1]  A. Betts,et al.  Basin‐scale surface water and energy budgets for the Mississippi from the ECMWF reanalysis , 1999 .

[2]  A. Betts,et al.  Surface Energy and Water Balance for the Arkansas-Red River Basin from the ECMWF Reanalysis , 1998 .

[3]  M. Kanamitsu,et al.  Vertical structure of humidity and temperature budget residuals over the Mississippi River basin , 1998 .

[4]  Pedro Viterbo,et al.  Comparison of the Land-Surface Interaction in the ECMWF Reanalysis Model with the 1987 FIFE Data , 1998 .

[5]  M. Kanamitsu,et al.  GDAS’s GCIP Energy Budgets , 1997 .

[6]  C. Ropelewski,et al.  Comparisons of humidity observations and Eta model analyses and forecasts for water balance studies , 1996 .

[7]  H. Pan,et al.  Nonlocal Boundary Layer Vertical Diffusion in a Medium-Range Forecast Model , 1996 .

[8]  Suranjana Saha,et al.  Systematic tendency error in budget calculations , 1996 .

[9]  E. Rasmusson,et al.  Studies of North American continental‐scale hydrology using Eta model forecast products , 1996 .

[10]  Pedro Viterbo,et al.  The land surface‐atmosphere interaction: A review based on observational and global modeling perspectives , 1996 .

[11]  Miller,et al.  The Anomalous Rainfall over the United States during July 1993: Sensitivity to Land Surface Parameterization and Soil Moisture Anomalies , 1996 .

[12]  Pedro Viterbo,et al.  An Improved Land Surface Parameterization Scheme in the ECMWF Model and Its Validation. , 1995 .

[13]  Richard B. Rood,et al.  An assimilated dataset for Earth science applications , 1993 .

[14]  Y. Mintz,et al.  A global monthly climatology of soil moisture and water balance , 1992 .

[15]  H. Pan,et al.  A two-layer model of soil hydrology , 1984 .