著者
Shinya KOBAYASHI Yukinari OTA Yayoi HARADA Ayataka EBITA Masami MORIYA Hirokatsu ONODA Kazutoshi ONOGI Hirotaka KAMAHORI Chiaki KOBAYASHI Hirokazu ENDO Kengo MIYAOKA Kiyotoshi TAKAHASHI
出版者
(公社)日本気象学会
雑誌
気象集誌. 第2輯 (ISSN:00261165)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.93, no.1, pp.5-48, 2015 (Released:2015-03-18)
参考文献数
128
被引用文献数
213 3128

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) conducted the second Japanese global atmospheric reanalysis, called the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis or JRA-55. It covers the period from 1958, when regular radiosonde observations began on a global basis. JRA-55 is the first comprehensive reanalysis that has covered the last half-century since the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts 45-year Reanalysis (ERA-40), and is the first one to apply four-dimensional variational analysis to this period. The main objectives of JRA-55 were to address issues found in previous reanalyses and to produce a comprehensive atmospheric dataset suitable for studying multidecadal variability and climate change. This paper describes the observations, data assimilation system, and forecast model used to produce JRA-55 as well as the basic characteristics of the JRA-55 product. JRA-55 has been produced with the TL319 version of JMA’s operational data assimilation system as of December 2009, which was extensively improved since the Japanese 25-year Reanalysis (JRA-25). It also uses several newly available and improved past observations. The resulting reanalysis products are considerably better than the JRA-25 product. Two major problems of JRA-25 were a cold bias in the lower stratosphere, which has been diminished, and a dry bias in the Amazon basin, which has been mitigated. The temporal consistency of temperature analysis has also been considerably improved compared to previous reanalysis products. Our initial quality evaluation revealed problems such as a warm bias in the upper troposphere, large upward imbalance in the global mean net energy fluxes at the top of the atmosphere and at the surface, excessive precipitation over the tropics, and unrealistic trends in analyzed tropical cyclone strength. This paper also assesses the impacts of model biases and changes in the observing system, and mentions efforts to further investigate the representation of low-frequency variability and trends in JRA-55.
著者
Ryusuke Masunaga Hisashi Nakamura Hirotaka Kamahori Kazutoshi Onogi Satoru Okajima
出版者
Meteorological Society of Japan
雑誌
SOLA (ISSN:13496476)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.14, pp.6-13, 2018 (Released:2018-01-18)
参考文献数
37
被引用文献数
1 14

As an additional product of the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA-55) project, a new global atmospheric reanalysis product, named JRA-55CHS, is under construction. It utilizes quarter-degree sea-surface temperature (SST) as lower-boundary condition with the same data assimilation system as the JRA-55 Conventional (JRA-55C), into which no satellite data is assimilated. The SST data can resolve steep SST gradients along the western boundary currents (WBCs), which are not necessarily well represented in many of the other atmospheric reanalysis products, including the JRA-55C. The present paper briefly documents basic performance of the JRA-55CHS, through comparing it with the JRA-55C and satellite observations in focusing on the major WBC regions. In the JRA-55CHS, mesoscale atmospheric structures along the WBCs are well reproduced in their climatological-mean fields as captured in the satellite observations. Their interannual- to decadal-scale variations associated with SST variations are also reasonably reproduced. The corresponding atmospheric features are less obvious in the JRA-55C owing to smoother SST prescribed. Furthermore, comparison between the two reanalysis products reveals that the influence of frontal-scale SST distributions can reach into the middle and upper troposphere, especially in summer. The JRA-55CHS will be useful for deepening our understanding of the nature of midlatitude frontal-scale air-sea interactions.
著者
Nobuyuki Kayaba Takashi Yamada Syugo Hayashi Kazutoshi Onogi Shinya Kobayashi Koichi Yoshimoto Kenji Kamiguchi Kazuya Yamashita
出版者
(公社)日本気象学会
雑誌
SOLA (ISSN:13496476)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.12, pp.1-5, 2016 (Released:2016-01-20)
参考文献数
8
被引用文献数
29

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) completed its second global atmospheric reanalysis, the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA-55). However, the horizontal spatial resolution of JRA-55, TL319 (about 55 km), is insufficient for representing the hilly topography of the Japanese islands. Therefore, to reproduce extreme events caused by the hilly topography and their long-term climatological change in Japan, JMA has conducted a dynamical regional downscaling, called DSJRA-55, based on JMA's operational mesoscale model, which has a horizontal resolution of 5 km. DSJRA-55 receives its initial field and boundary conditions from the JRA-55 reanalysis. DSJRA-55 is historically the first products in the world that covers very long term for 55 years with very high resolution in 5 km. Furthermore, DSJRA-55 does not perform data assimilation; instead, initial field and boundary conditions are given at frequent intervals to the downscaled model and short-range forecasts are performed. Then, successive forecasts are connected continuously to create the DSJRA-55 product. In early evaluation results, DSJRA-55 was able to reproduce observed temperature and precipitation during 1958-2012. Although it showed a systematic temperature bias in some regions and seasons and it underestimated the frequencies of heavy-rain days and heavy-rain hours, DSJRA-55 reproduced the overall distribution of orographic precipitation well. DSJRA-55 is therefore expected to be useful for analyzing past extreme events and for statistical studies of long-term climate.
著者
Yayoi HARADA Hirotaka KAMAHORI Chiaki KOBAYASHI Hirokazu ENDO Shinya KOBAYASHI Yukinari OTA Hirokatsu ONODA Kazutoshi ONOGI Kengo MIYAOKA Kiyotoshi TAKAHASHI
出版者
Meteorological Society of Japan
雑誌
気象集誌. 第2輯 (ISSN:00261165)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.94, no.3, pp.269-302, 2016 (Released:2016-07-02)
参考文献数
54
被引用文献数
261 329

This study investigates the quality of the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA-55), which is the second global reanalysis constructed by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), by comparing it with other reanalyses and observational datasets. Improvements were found in the representation of atmospheric circulation on an isentropic surface and in the consistency of momentum budget based on the mass-weighted isentropic zonal mean method. The representation of climate variability in several regions was also examined. In the tropics, the frequencies of high spatial correlations with precipitation, which were estimated using the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis, are clearly higher in JRA-55 than in JRA-25. The results indicate that JRA-55 generally improved the representations of phenomena on a wide range of space-time scales, such as equatorial waves, and transient eddies in the storm track regions, compared with JRA-25 during the satellite era. Moreover, JRA-55 improved the temporal consistency compared with the older reanalyses throughout the reanalysis period. In the stratosphere, we found larger discrepancies between reanalyses for the extra-tropical stratosphere during the Southern Hemisphere (SH) winter. Comparisons with radiosonde temperature revealed that JRA-55 has a smaller bias in temperature than the other reanalyses in the extra-tropical SH winter before 1979. Some issues in JRA-55 were also identified. The amplitude of equatorial waves and Madden-Julian oscillation in JRA-55 are weaker than in the other reanalyses. JRA-55 shows unrealistic strong cooling in South America and Australia, although the spatial distribution of the long-term temperature trends in JRA-55 is the closest to an observational dataset of global historical surface temperature.
著者
Ayataka Ebita Shinya Kobayashi Yukinari Ota Masami Moriya Ryoji Kumabe Kazutoshi Onogi Yayoi Harada Soichiro Yasui Kengo Miyaoka Kiyotoshi Takahashi Hirotaka Kamahori Chiaki Kobayashi Hirokazu Endo Motomu Soma Yoshinori Oikawa Takahisa Ishimizu
出版者
Meteorological Society of Japan
雑誌
SOLA (ISSN:13496476)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.7, pp.149-152, 2011 (Released:2011-10-06)
参考文献数
24
被引用文献数
289 412

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) started the second Japanese global atmospheric reanalysis project named the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA-55). It covers 55 years, extending back to 1958, when the global radiosonde observing system was established. Many of the deficiencies found in the first Japanese reanalysis, the Japanese 25-year Reanalysis (JRA-25), have been improved. It aims at providing a comprehensive atmospheric dataset that is suitable for studies of climate change or multi-decadal variability, by producing a more time-consistent dataset for a longer period than JRA-25.Production of JRA-55 started in 2010, and computations for more than 16 years have been completed as of August 2011. The entire JRA-55 production will be completed in early 2013 and thereafter JRA-55 will be continued as a new JCDAS on real time basis. This paper is a brief report to introduce the JRA-55 reanalysis project. The data assimilation and prediction (DA) system used in JRA-55 is introduced and compared to that used in JRA-25. Early results of JRA-55 are presented and discussed, showing general improvements.
著者
Chiaki Kobayashi Hirokazu Endo Yukinari Ota Shinya Kobayashi Hirokatsu Onoda Yayoi Harada Kazutoshi Onogi Hirotaka Kamahori
出版者
(公社)日本気象学会
雑誌
SOLA (ISSN:13496476)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.10, pp.78-82, 2014 (Released:2014-05-14)
参考文献数
11
被引用文献数
6 51

As a subset of the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA-55) project, the Meteorological Research Institute of the Japan Meteorological Agency is conducting a global atmospheric reanalysis that assimilates only conventional surface and upper air observations, with no use of satellite observations, using the same data assimilation system as the JRA-55. The project, named the JRA-55 Conventional (JRA-55C), aims to produce a more homogeneous dataset over a long period, unaffected by changes in historical satellite observing systems. The dataset is intended to be suitable for studies of climate change or multi-decadal variability. The climatological properties deduced from the early results of the JRA-55C are similar to those of the JRA-55 in the troposphere and lower stratosphere, except for high southern latitudes. On the basis of forecast skill, the quality of the JRA-55C is inferior to that of the JRA-55, but the JRA-55C has better temporal homogeneity than the JRA-55. The skill of the latter changes during the JRA-55 period. We have completed 85% of the entire JRA-55C calculation as of February 2014. We expect that the JRA-55C will contribute to a much better understanding of the impact of changes in observing systems on climate trends and variability estimated from the JRA-55.