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  1. Home
  2. Essential Climate Variables
  3. Upper-air Wind Speed and Direction

 

Upper-air Wind Speed and Direction

Wind is one of the fundamental state variables for understanding and predicting the behaviour of the atmosphere. It is basic to the working of the climate system through transport of heat, moisture and trace constituents. Measurements of wind are vital for initializing and verifying climate projections and for detecting, understanding and attributing variability and change in the climate system.

  Domain: Atmosphere
  Subdomain: Upper Atmosphere
  Scientific Area: Physical Properties
  ECV Steward: Shinya Kobayashi
  Products:  Wind (horizontal) in the Boundary Layer, Wind (horizontal) in the Free Troposphere, Wind (horizontal) in the Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere, Wind (horizontal) in the Middle and Upper Stratosphere, Wind (horizontal) in the Mesosphere, Wind (vertical) in the Boundary Layer, Wind (vertical) in the Free Troposphere, Wind (vertical)in the Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere, Wind (vertical) in the Middle and Upper Stratosphere, Wind (vertical) in the Mesosphere

 


Hadley and Walker Circulation

Figure: (a) Indices of the strength of the northern Hadley circulation in December to March (Ψmax is the maximum of the meridional mass stream function at 500 hPa between the equator and 40°N). (b) Indices of the strength of the Pacific Walker circulation in September to January (Δω is the difference in the vertical velocity between [10°S to 10°N, 180°W to 100°W] and [10°S to 10°N, 100°E to 150°E] as in Oort and Yienger (1996), Δc is the difference in cloud cover between [6°N to 12°S, 165°E to 149°W] and [18°N to 6°N, 165°E to 149°W] as in Deser et al. (2010a), vE is the effective wind index from SSM/I satellite data, updated from Sohn and Park (2010), u is the zonal wind at 10 m averaged in the region [10°S to 10°N, 160°E to 160°W], ΔSLP is the SLP difference between [5°S to 5°N, 160°W to 80°W] and [5°S to 5°N, 80°E to 160°E] as in Vecchi et al. (2006)). Reanalysis data sets include 20CR, NCEP/NCAR, ERA-Interim, JRA-25, MERRA, and CFSR, except for the zonal wind at 10 m (20CR, NCEP/NCAR, ERA-Interim), where available until January 2013. ERA-40 and NCEP2 are not shown as they are outliers with respect to the strength trend of the northern Hadley circulation (Mitas and Clement, 2005; Song and Zhang, 2007; Hu et al., 2011; Stachnik and Schumacher, 2011). Observation data sets include HadSLP2, ICOADS ( only 1957–2009 data are shown) and WASWIND, reconstructions are from Brönnimann et al. (2009). Where more than one time series was available, anomalies from the 1980/1981 to 2009/2010 mean values of each series are shown.

Source: Figure 2.39 of Hartmann, D.L., A.M.G. Klein Tank, M. Rusticucci, L.V. Alexander, S. Brönnimann, Y. Charabi, F.J. Dentener, E.J. Dlugokencky, D.R. Easterling, A. Kaplan, B.J. Soden, P.W. Thorne, M. Wild and P.M. Zhai, 2013: Observations: Atmosphere and Surface. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

 


ECV Products and Requirements

These products and requirements reflect the Implementation Plan 2022 (GCOS-244).

The requirements are found in the complete 2022 ECVs Requirements document as well: ECV Upper-air Wind Speed and Direction.

Products Wind (horizontal) in the 
    Boundary Layer     Free Troposphere Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere     Middle and Upper Stratosphere Mesosphere
  (*) Unit Values   Unit Values Values   Unit Values Values
Horizontal Resolution G km 15   km 15 15   km 50 50
B 100   100 100   100 100
T 500   1000 500   3000 3000
Vertical Resolution G km 10(1)   m 10 25   km 1 1
B 50(10)   100 100   2 2
T 100   1500 500   3 3
Temporal Resolution G min 30(1)   h 1 1   h 1 1
B 60   6 6   6 6
T 720   12 12   24 24
Timeliness G h 6   h 6 6   h 6 6
B 18   18 18   18 18
T 48   48 48   48 48
Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma) G m s-1 0.5   m s-1 1 1   m s-1 1 1
B 3   3 3 5 5
T 5   5 5 10 10
Stability G m s-1/ decade 0.1   m s-1/ decade 0.1 0.1   m s-1/ decade 0.1 0.1
B 0.3   0.3 0.3 0.5 0.5
T 0.5   0.5 0.5 1 1

 

Products Wind (vertical) in the 
    Boundary Layer     Free Troposphere Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere     Middle and Upper Stratosphere Mesosphere
  (*) Unit Values   Unit Values Values   Unit Values Values
Horizontal Resolution G km 15   km 15 15   km 50 50
B 200   200 200   200 200
T 500   1000 500   3000 3000
Vertical Resolution G m 10(1)   m 10 25   km 0.5 1
B 100   100 100   2 2
T 500   1500 500   3 3
Temporal Resolution G min 30(1)   h 1 1   h 1 1
B 60   6 6   6 6
T 720   12 12   24 24
Timeliness G h 6   h 6 6   h 6 6
B 18   18 18   18 18
T 48   48 48   48 48
Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma) G cm s-1 0.5   cm s-1 0.5 0.5   cm s-1 1 2
B 1   1.5 1.5   3 6
T 1.5   2.5 2.5   5 10
Stability G cm s-1/ decade 0.05   cm s-1/ decade 0.05 0.05   cm s-1/ decade 0.05 0.1
B 0.1   0.15 0.15   0.15 0.2
T 0.15   0.25 0.25   0.25 0.3

 

(*) Goal (G): an ideal requirement above which further improvements are not necessary. Breakthrough (B): an intermediate level between threshold and goal which, if achieved, would result in a significant improvement for the targeted application. The breakthrough value may also indicate the level at which specified uses within climate monitoring become possible. It may be appropriate to have different breakthrough values for different uses. Threshold (T): the minimum requirement to be met to ensure that data are useful


Data Sources

This list provides sources for openly accessible data sets with worldwide coverage for which metadata is available. It is curated by the respective GCOS ECV Steward(s). The list does not claim to be complete. Anyone with a suitable dataset who wishes it to be added to this list should contact the GCOS Secretariat.

In Situ:

  • Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (IGRA)
    https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/weather-balloon/integrated-global…
     
  • GCOS Reference Upper-Air Network (GRUAN)
    https://www.gruan.org/

Reanalysis:

  • REANALYSES.ORG (Inventory for Reanalysis)
    http://reanalyses.org

Satellite:

  • Satellite ECV Inventory by the CEOS/CGMS Working Group on Climate (WGClimate)
    http://climatemonitoring.info/ecvinventory
     
  • Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)
    http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/cams-ghg-inversions/

Satellite:

  • Satellite ECV Inventory by the CEOS/CGMS Working Group on Climate (WGClimate)
    http://climatemonitoring.info/ecvinventory

 

EU Copernicus

 

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