arXiv subjects

Sandro Calmanti

Publications and source records attributed to Sandro Calmanti.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2006

Does the subtropical jet catalyze the mid-latitude atmospheric regimes?

Understanding the atmospheric low-frequency variability is of crucial importance in fields such as climate studies, climate change detection, and extended-range weather forecast. The Northern Hemisphere climate features the planetary waves as a relevant ingredient of the atmospheric variability. Several observations and theoretical arguments seem to support the idea that winter planetary waves indicator obey a non-Gaussian statistics and may present a multimodal probability density function, thus characterizing the low-frequency portion of the climate system. We show that the upper tropospheric jet strength is a critical parameter in determining whether the planetary waves indicator exhibits a uni- or bimodal behavior, and we determine the relevant threshold value of the jet. These results are obtained by considering the data of the NCEP-NCAR and ECMWF reanalyses for the overlapping period. Our results agree with the non-linear orographic theory, which explains the statistical non-normality of the low-frequency variability of the atmosphere and its possible bimodality.

physics.ao-ph↗

arXiv2006

Intercomparison of the northern hemisphere winter mid-latitude atmospheric variability of the IPCC models

We compare, for the overlapping time frame 1962-2000, the estimate of the northern hemisphere (NH) mid-latitude winter atmospheric variability within the XX century simulations of 17 global climate models (GCMs) included in the IPCC-4AR with the NCEP and ECMWF reanalyses. We compute the Hayashi spectra of the 500hPa geopotential height fields and introduce an integral measure of the variability observed in the NH on different spectral sub-domains. Only two high-resolution GCMs have a good agreement with reanalyses. Large biases, in most cases larger than 20%, are found between the wave climatologies of most GCMs and the reanalyses, with a relative span of around 50%. The travelling baroclinic waves are usually overestimated, while the planetary waves are usually underestimated, in agreement with previous studies performed on global weather forecasting models. When comparing the results of various versions of similar GCMs, it is clear that in some cases the vertical resolution of the atmosphere and, somewhat unexpectedly, of the adopted ocean model seem to be critical in determining the agreement with the reanalyses. The GCMs ensemble is biased with respect to the reanalyses but is comparable to the best 5 GCMs. This study suggests serious caveats with respect to the ability of most of the presently available GCMs in representing the statistics of the global scale atmospheric dynamics of the present climate and, a fortiori, in the perspective of modelling climate change.

physics.ao-ph↗

arXiv2004

Hayashi Spectra of the Northern Hemisphere Mid-latitude Atmospheric Variability in the NCEP and ERA 40 Reanalyses

We compare 45 years of the reanalyses of NCEP-NCAR and ECMWF in terms of their representation of the mid-latitude winter atmospheric variability for the overlapping time frame 1957-2002. We adopt the classical approach of computing the Hayashi spectra of the 500 hPa geopotential height fields. Discrepancies are found especially in the first 15 years of the records in the high-frequency-high wavenumber propagating waves and secondly on low frequency-low wavenumber standing waves. This implies that in the first period the two datasets have a different representation of the baroclinic available energy conversion processes. In the period starting from 1973 a positive impact of the aircraft data on the Euro-Atlantic synoptic waves has been highlighted. Since in the first period the assimilated data are scarcer and of lower quality than later on, they provide a weaker constraint to the model dynamics. Therefore, the resulting discrepancies in the reanalysis products may be mainly attributed to differences in the models' behavior.

physics.ao-ph↗

arXiv2004

Destabilization of the thermohaline circulation by transient perturbations to the hydrological cycle

We reconsider the problem of the stability of the thermohaline circulation as described by a two-dimensional Boussinesq model with mixed boundary conditions. We determine how the stability properties of the system depend on the intensity of the hydrological cycle. We define a two-dimensional parameters' space descriptive of the hydrology of the system and determine, by considering suitable quasi-static perturbations, a bounded region where multiple equilibria of the system are realized. We then focus on how the response of the system to finite-amplitude surface freshwater forcings depends on their rate of increase. We show that it is possible to define a robust separation between slow and fast regimes of forcing. Such separation is obtained by singling out an estimate of the critical growth rate for the anomalous forcing, which can be related to the characteristic advective time scale of the system.

physics.ao-ph↗