Diurnal tides from the troposphere to the lower mesosphere as deduced from TIMED/SABER satellite data and six global reanalysis data sets

Abstract

We compare and examine diurnal temperature tides including their migrating component (DW1) from the troposphere to the lower mesosphere, using data from Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesosphere-Energetics and Dynamics/Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (TIMED/SABER) and from six different reanalysis data sets: (1) the Modern Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA), (2) the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis (ERA-Interim) (3) the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR), (4) the Japanese 25-year reanalysis by Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) and the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI) (JRA25), (5) the NCEP/National Center for Atmospheric Research reanalysis (NCEP1), and (6) the NCEP and Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP-II) reanalysis data (NCEP2). The horizontal and vertical structures of the diurnal tides in SABER and reanalyses reasonably agree, although the amplitudes are up to 30-50% smaller in the reanalyses than in the SABER in the upper stratosphere to lower mesosphere. Of all tidal components, the DW1 is dominant while a clear eastward propagating zonal wave number 3 component (DE3) is observed at midlatitudes of the Southern Hemisphere in winter. Among the six reanalyses, MERRA, ERA-Interim and CFSR are better at reproducing realistic diurnal tides. It is found that the diurnal tides extracted from SABER data in the winter-hemisphere stratosphere suffer from sampling issues that are caused by short-term variations of the background temperature. In addition, the GSWM underestimates the amplitude in the midlatitude upper stratosphere by about 50%. © 2012. American Geophysical Union.