Multireanalysis Comparison of Variability in Column Water Vapor and Its Analysis Increment Associated with the Madden–Julian Oscillation

Abstract

his study conducts a multireanalysis comparison of variability in column water vapor (CWV) represented in three reanalysis products [Japanese 55-year Reanalysis Project (JRA-55), JRA-25, and ECMWF Interim Re-Analysis (ERA-Interim)] associated with the Madden?Julian oscillation (MJO) in boreal winter, with emphasis on CWV tendency simulated by forecast models and analysis increment calculated by data assimilation systems. Analyses of these variables show that, while the JRA-55 forecast model is able to simulate eastward propagation of the CWV anomaly, this model tends to weaken its amplitude. The multireanalysis comparison of the analysis increment further reveals that this weakening bias is related to excessively weak cloud radiative feedback represented by the model. This bias in the feedback strength makes anomalous moisture supply by the vertical advection term in the CWV budget equation too insensitive to precipitation anomaly, resulting in reduction of the amplitude of CWV anomaly. ERA-Interim has a nearly opposite feature: the forecast model represents excessively strong feedback. These results imply the necessity of accurate representation of the cloud radiative feedback strength for a short-term MJO forecast and may be evidence to support the argument that this feedback is essential for the existence of MJO. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that the multireanalysis comparison of the analysis increment will provide useful information for examining model biases and potentially for estimating parameters that are difficult to estimate from observational data, such as gross moist stability.