Web-based Reanalyses Intercomparison Tools (WRIT): NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory

Web-based Reanalyses Intercomparison Tools (WRIT)

Atmosphere

ATMOS Maps ATMOS Time Series ATMOS Correlations ATMOS Trajectories ATMOS Distributions ATMOS Profiles ATMOS Hovmollers

ATMOS Maps ATMOS Timeseries ATMOS Correlations ATMOS Trajectories ATMOS Distributions ATMOS Profiles ATMOS Hovmollers

Ocean

OCEAN Maps OCEAN Time Series OCEAN Correlations

OCEAN Maps OCEAN Timeseries OCEAN Correlations

Product Descriptions

Atmospheric or Oceanic Monthly/Seasonal Plotting Page:
Allows users to make maps and vertical cross-sections from various reanalyses. Statistics include means, anomalies and climatologies. Users can also difference the various reanalyses for all three types of statistics (for any overlapping date in the reanalyses). Composites (averaging multiple dates) are also available.

Atmospheric or Oceanic Monthly Timeseries Extractor/Analyzer:
Extracts timeseries at specified lat/lon or lat/lon ranges and either plots the time-series, time-series differences, and scatter plots. Various statistics are returned in addition to numeric values of the time-series plotted. Ability to plot and compare climate index time-series such as the PNA or Niño3.4 or upload your own.

Atmospheric or Oceanic Monthly Correlation Plotter:
Calculates correlations (and regressions) of the reanalysis and observational dataset with supplied atmospheric/ocean indices or user uploaded time-series. Users can plot correlations at different lead/lags. They can also create vertical cross-section correlation plots.

Atmospheric Trajectory Generator:
Allows users to plot forward and backward air trajectories from different reanalyses (currently NCEP R1, NCEP R2, and 20CR, and ERA-Interim). Users can plot the trajectories of one or more levels on a single plot. The output is plotted on a map and is available as netCDF and as KMZ files suitable for Google Earth.

Atmospheric Distribution Analyzer:
Allows users to plot and compare the distributions of daily data during a season from different sources including different reanalyses (currently NCEP R1 and 20CR) and observed data. Users can see where data values have fallen historically and can see how different distribution assumptions impact the tails of the distribution.

Atmospheric Vertical Profiles:
Allows users to plot different vertical products from reanalyses including skew-T, variable/height, timeXheight, and vertical transects (daily data).

Atmospheric Hovmollers:
Allows users to make plots of daily and subdaily time by latitude or time by longitude for different reanalysis datasets. Statistics include means and anomalies.

Posters/Talks

Ocean WRIT: preliminary PPT

Publication

Smith C. A., G. P. Compo and D. K. Hooper (November 2014): Web-Based Reanalysis Intercomparison Tools (WRIT) for Analysis and Comparison of Reanalyses and Other Datasets. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 95 (11), 1671-1678. doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00192.1

Future WRIT Tool Enhancements

Standardized time-series
Lead/Lag time-series relationships
Spatial correlations comparing different reanalyses

Future Atmospheric WRIT Products

We are exploring the feasibility of various tools. The features we hope to have are:

Daily time scale composites atmospheric reanalyses.
Sub-Daily composite atmospheric reanalyses
Creation and comparison of index timeseries such as the PNA from the various atmospheric reanalyses

Future Ocean WRIT Products

Comparison of buoy and profile data

Background

Reanalyses.org: A wiki for advancing reanalyses. Users can find information about reanalyses (atmosphere, ocean, land), how to access and plot data, reanalyses observations, diagnostics, and more. Members can post information and ask questions of the reanalysis community.
Caveats. Also see specific tool information.
Smith C. A., G. P. Compo and D. K. Hooper (November 2014): Web-Based Reanalysis Intercomparison Tools (WRIT) for Analysis and Comparison of Reanalyses and Other Datasets. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 95 (11), 1671-1678. doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00192.1

Datasets

There are two types of gridded datasets in the PSL WRIT tools pages. They are atmosphere and ocean reanalysis and gridded observations/analysis. Each web tool uses different sets of datasets depending on what it is plotting/analyzing, our storage, server, and memory resources. Thereis a link from each page to the datasets used.

There are also climate and ocean time-series available for the correlation webpage and the time-series plotting pages. See

List of index time-series (PNA, ENSO, NP,...)

Users are welcome to suggest new climate index time-series or gridded observational datasets and we will consider adding them.

Atmospheric WRIT Examples

WRIT: Composites Plot

WRIT: Time-series Plot

Trajectory Plot

WRIT: Correlation Plot

Vertical Profiles Plot

Hovmollers Plot

Ocean WRIT Examples

WRIT: Composites Plot

WRIT: Time-series Plot

WRIT: Correlation Plot

WRIT: Map (Depth) Plot

WRIT: Correlation using user generated Time-series Plot

Referencing WRIT Products

You can use the plots produced from this page in publications. We ask that you acknowledge the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory in the publication. For example,

"Image provided by the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory, Boulder Colorado from their web site at https://psl.noaa.gov/".

You will also need to reference the datasets directly. For references/citations please go to the Reanalyses.org ocean or atmospheric wiki pages for a current list of reanalysis and citations. For other datasets and time-series, there are links from the WRIT output pages and dataset documentation webpages.