Articles | Volume 4, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-4-531-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-4-531-2023
Research article
 | 
22 Jun 2023
Research article |  | 22 Jun 2023

Large uncertainty in observed estimates of tropical width from the meridional stream function

Daniel Baldassare, Thomas Reichler, Piret Plink-Björklund, and Jacob Slawson

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Cited articles

Adam, O., Grise, K. M., Staten, P., Simpson, I. R., Davis, S. M., Davis, N. A., Waugh, D. W., Birner, T., and Ming, A.: The TropD software package (v1): standardized methods for calculating tropical-width diagnostics, Geosci. Model Dev., 11, 4339–4357, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-4339-2018, 2018. 
Allen, R. J., Norris, J. R., and Kovilakam, M.: Influence of anthropogenic aerosols and the Pacific decadal oscillation on tropical belt width, Nat. Geosci., 7, 270–274, https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2091, 2014. 
Baldassare, D. and Reichler, T.: Piret Plink-Björklund and Jacob Slawson: Processing code and data for ERA5 analysis, Zenodo [code and data set], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7430530, 2022. 
CDS: Welcome to the Climate Data Store, https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu (last access: 20 June 2023), 2023. 
Chen, J., Carlson, B. E., and Del Genio, A. D.: Evidence for strengthening of the tropical general circulation in the 1990s, Science, 295, 838–841, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1065835, 2002. 
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Short summary
Using ensemble members from the ERA5 reanalysis, the most widely used method for estimating tropical-width trends, the meridional stream function, was found to have large error, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere and in the summer, because of weak gradients at the tropical edge and poor data quality. Another method, using the latitude where the surface wind switches from westerly to easterly, was found to have lower error due to better-observed data.
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