Climate Change Vertical Profiles (2022)

January 2022

The following is an update of Vertical Profiles of Climate Change. As described in that posting, the analyses compare vertical profiles of climate model predictions from past NASA GISS Model E runs with the profiles of the ECMWF ReAnalysis (ERA5), of the Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (IGRA) V2 data set, and of the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) satellite based Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) data. The analyses are for the RAOB Era ( 1958 through 2021 ), the MSU Era ( 1979 through 2021 ) and the Twenty-First Century ( 2001 through 2021 ).

Vertical Profiles of RAOB Era Climate Changes

Vertical distributions of the RAOB era change of temperature in row 1, zonal wind speed in row 2, humidity in row 3, and cloud fraction in row 4. Changes for NASA GISS Model E in column a, and for the IGRA radiosonde data in column c.

Vertical Profiles of MSU Era Climate Changes

Vertical distributions of the MSU era change of temperature in row 5, zonal wind speed in row 6, humidity in row 7, and cloud fraction in row 8. Changes for NASA GISS Model E in column a, for the ERA5 reanalysis in column b, for the IGRA radiosonde data in column c, for the UAH MSU analysis in column d, and for the RSS MSU analysis in column e.

Vertical Profiles of Twenty-First Century Climate Changes

Vertical distributions of the twenty-first century change of temperature in row 9, zonal wind speed in row 10, humidity in row 11, and cloud fraction in row 12. Changes for NASA GISS Model E in column a, for the ERA5 reanalysis in column b, for the IGRA radiosonde data in column c, for the UAH MSU analysis in column d, and for the RSS MSU analysis in column e.

Discussion

The trends of this update, being extended by only a single year, differ only slightly from those through 2020, but the updated trends exhibit the following qualitative characteristics.

Temperature. Broadly, observations and reanalyses tend to support the modeled predictions of decreasing stratospheric temperature, increasing tropospheric temperature, and an Arctic maxima of temperature increase for each of the defined periods of interest. The Hot Spot is not well supported over the RAOB and MSU eras but is suggested over the still brief Twenty-First Century period by the Reanalysis and RAOB data.

Zonal Wind Speed. The mid-latitude upper “t-bone” shaped maxima appear in the reanalysis for all three periods. There are qualitative contradictions of zonal wind speed between model and reanalysis elsewhere. The RAOB data appear to lack coherent trends.

Humidity. The Reanalysis and RAOB trends for all three periods indicate areas of relatively intense decreases of absolute humidity which conflict with modeled trends.

Cloud Fraction. Reanalysis cloud fraction trends are in qualitative disagreement with modeled cloud fraction trends for large portions of the global vertical profile for all three periods.

There are uncertainties with the reanalyses, raob averages and satellite based data. Among other things, spatial and temporal coverage are sparse, instrumentation and calibrations change over time with observations. And the reanalysis process involves a degree of prognostication, extrapolation, and use of similar parameterizations as those in the climate models against which we compare results.

References

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