Abstract
Diurnal variations in precipitation, clouds and other related fields are of interest for many applications. Here I analyze surface and satellite observations and ERA5 data to quantify these variations and evaluate ERA5’s performance. Results show that ERA5 captures the observed seasonal climatology of precipitation and cloud amount remarkably well. Surface observations show that warm-season precipitation exhibits a robust diurnal cycle with an amplitude of ~ 20 to 50% of the daily mean and a peak around 14–18 local solar time (LST) over most land areas and 04–08 LST over most oceans. ERA5 approximately reproduces these features with a slightly earlier peak (by ~ 2 h) over both land and ocean and a stronger amplitude over land, mainly due to biases in its convective precipitation. The IMERG satellite product captures mainly the diurnal cycle of convective precipitation with a peak around 16–20 LST during the warm season. ERA5 oceanic precipitation shows robust diurnal variations that are comparable to observations despite its dampened marine surface diurnal cycle due to its use of daily-mean SST. This suggests a free-tropospheric control of oceanic precipitation diurnal cycle. Surface and satellite observations show more clouds (mainly from low clouds) during daytime (nighttime) over land (ocean). ERA5 total cloud diurnal anomalies are more comparable to surface observations than to ISCCP satellite product. Cloud base height shows a minimum in early afternoon and a maximum around midnight with a diurnal amplitude of ~ 150 m over warm-season land in surface observations; ERA5 approximately captures this diurnal cycle with a slightly stronger amplitude and earlier phase. Land planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) in ERA5 is around 250 m at night but increases after sunrise to a peak around 14–15 LST of about 1500–1900 m in the warm season and ~ 650 to 1100 m in the cold season, with largest diurnal amplitudes over summer drylands. ERA5 marine PBLH is higher in the cold season (~ 1000 m) than in the warm season (~ 530 m) in the extra-tropics, suggesting a dominant role by low-level wind-induced mixing. ERA5 CAPE shows out-of-phase diurnal variations over land and ocean, with near-noontime peak (minimum) and an early morning minimum (peak) over land (ocean). ERA5 CIN’s diurnal cycle is approximately out of phase with CAPE. ERA5 captures well the diurnal cycles and their land–ocean and seasonal differences in surface net shortwave and longwave (LWnet) radiation seen in CERES satellite product, with a near-noontime peak in land LWnet. A near-noontime peak is also seen in ERA surface sensible and latent heat fluxes over land, while oceanic PBLH, LWnet and heat fluxes show little diurnal variation in ERA5, which may be partly due to its use of daily-mean SST.
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Data availability
ERA5 data available from https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-single-levels?tab=form. The averaged 3-hourly data from surface observations are available from https://www2.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/data-dai.html. The CERES data are https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/data/. The ISCCP data are available from https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/climate-data-records/cloud-properties-isccp.
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This work was funded by University at Albany of SUNY, NSF (Grants AGS-2015780 and OISE-1743738).
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Dai, A. The diurnal cycle from observations and ERA5 in precipitation, clouds, boundary layer height, buoyancy, and surface fluxes. Clim Dyn (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-024-07182-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-024-07182-6