3rd G-VAP Workshop

Fort Collins, CO September 30 – October 2, 20131 NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center

Correlation of Upper Tropospheric Humidity (UTH)

with Climate IndicesLei Shi1, Carl Schreck2, Marc

Schröder3 1 NOAA/NESDIS/National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, NC, USA2 Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, NC State Univ., Asheville, NC, USA3 Deutscher Wetterdienst, Satellite Based Climate Monitoring, Offenbach, Germany

3rd G-VAP Workshop

Fort Collins, CO September 30 – October 2, 20132 NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center

Datasets

• Two datasets for inter-comparison– High Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder (HIRS)

since late 1978 (polar orbiting)– Meteosat Visible and InfraRed Imager (MVIRI) and

Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) since 1983 (geostationary)

3rd G-VAP Workshop

Fort Collins, CO September 30 – October 2, 20133 NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center

Climate Indices

• The value of climate indices for forecasting has been known for decades.

• A widely used one is the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), in which persistent sea surface temperature anomalies drive distinctive weather patterns around the globe.

• Other important teleconnection patterns include the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the Pacific–North American (PNA) pattern, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the Arctic Oscillation (AO), and the Antarctic oscillation (AAO)

• Because these patterns evolve on timescales of weeks or more, they provide critical sources of long-range predictability.

• In this assessment we compare the UTH correlation patterns to the Niño3.4, PDO, and NAO indices.

3rd G-VAP Workshop

Fort Collins, CO September 30 – October 2, 20134 NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center

Correlation with Nino 3.4 index

Source: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/enso.description.html

1983 - 2009 1983 - 2009 1978 - 2011

3rd G-VAP Workshop

Fort Collins, CO September 30 – October 2, 20135 NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center

Correlation with Nino 3.4 index

Source: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/enso.description.html

1983 - 2009 1978 - 2011

3rd G-VAP Workshop

Fort Collins, CO September 30 – October 2, 20136 NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center

Correlation with PDO index

1983 - 2009 1983 - 2009 1978 - 2011

3rd G-VAP Workshop

Fort Collins, CO September 30 – October 2, 20137 NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center

Correlation with PDO index

1983 - 2009 1978 - 2011

3rd G-VAP Workshop

Fort Collins, CO September 30 – October 2, 20138 NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center

Correlation with NAO index

1983 - 2009 1983 - 2009 1978 - 2011

Source: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/teledoc/nao_tmap.shtml

3rd G-VAP Workshop

Fort Collins, CO September 30 – October 2, 20139 NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center

Correlation with NAO index

1983 - 2009 1978 - 2011

Source: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/teledoc/nao_pmap.shtml

3rd G-VAP Workshop

Fort Collins, CO September 30 – October 2, 201310 NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center

Preliminary Findings

• Both METEOSAT UTH and HIRS UTH have high correlations with several climate indices in cold seasons

• The correlation patterns closely resemble the El Niño phase

• The correlation patterns from both datasets correspond well with the positive phases of PDO and NAO, but with some shifts in the locations of high/low index centers

• METEOSAT UTH generally has lower positive correlation values compared to those of HIRS UTH, likely due to the missing data for March 1997 through May 1998 (an El Niño event)

• METEOSAT UTH generally has higher negative correlation values compared to HIRS UTH, possibly because of overall lower UTH values in METEOSAT

• HIRS UTH has coverage for all longitudes to provide a more complete picture of the patterns