Abstract
The goal of this study is to compare the differences in surface air temperature (SAT) between observational and reanalysis data in mainland China from 1961–2015 for evaluating the reliability and applicability of the reanalysis datasets, based on an observational dataset of 763 stations which has been adjusted for urbanization bias, and 8 reanalysis datasets. The time series, anomaly correlations, standard deviations, climate state, and linear trends of the reanalysis data are evaluated against the observations. The reanalysis data are consistent with the observational climate characteristics to a large extent. The correlation and standard deviation ratio between the reanalysis data and observations exhibited highly consistent inter–annual variability and dispersion, with the inter–annual SAT variability of JRA55 and ERA5 the closest to the observations for the periods 1961–2015 and 1979–2015, and the dispersions of 20CRV3 and NCEPV1 the most consistent with the observations for the two periods. The annual mean SAT of the reanalyses is generally 0–2.0°C lower than the observations, while the linear trends of all datasets exhibited clear warming. The biases in the SAT climatology of 20CRV3 and CRA40 are lower than other reanalysis datasets, and the linear trends of NCEPV1 and 20CRV3 are closer to the observations. With increasing elevation, the biases of the reanalysis data in terms of correlation, standard deviation, climate state, and linear trend all increased. Overall, in terms of the similarity of multiple measures to the urbanization bias–adjusted observations, CRA40 and JRA55 show the best performance of the products in reproducing various aspects of climatological and climate change features in mainland China for the period 1979–2015 and 1961–2015 respectively.
A Comprehensive Evaluation of Surface Air Temperature Reanalyses over China against Urbanization Bias–Adjusted Observations
