SPARC Reference Climatology Project

The SPARC Reference Climatology project focuses on intercomparisons of monthly mean stratospheric analyses of several international satellite, sounding and model data. W.J. Randel is the lead scientist of this project. Several stratospheric analyses are available from the SPARC data center. Bill Randel provided monthly mean model analyses from the models of the:

  • European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF),
  • UK Met Office (UKMO),
  • National Center for Environmental Prediction Reanalyses (NCEP_RA),
  • stratospheric analysis of the National Meteorological Center/Climate Prediction Center (NMC/CPC)

Additional data sets encompass tropopause heights derived from NCEP data and the zonal mean trace gas distributions for CH4,H2O, O3, HF, HCl, NO2 (sunrise and sunset), NO (sunrise and sunset), ClO, N2O, and HNO3 from UARS measurements. Global ozone trends as a function of latitude and height for 1979-1996 are available as well.

W. J. Randel’s Reference Climatologies

Eric Fleming provided the COPSAR International Reference Atmosphere (CIRA-86) stratospheric analyses.

Steven Pawson provided the stratospheric analyses from the Free University Berlin (FUBOBS).

Richard Swinbank from the UK Met office provided analyses from the Stratospheric Sounding Unit of the Tiros Operational Vertical Sounder (UKTOVS). He also provided wind data from UARS.