PACS
Analyses for revised PACS prospectus/implementation plan
Figures:
6: Pan American topography
7: Annual mean snow, soil moisture, and vegetation
8: Monsoon rainfall and circulations
10: North American monsoon latitude-time section
17: snowcover seasonal march
18: July minus June precipitation difference
19: Interannual variability of leaf area index (LAI)
32: Time series of warm season rainfall.
35,36: ENSO influence on tropical storms
42: Observing system
Figure 6: Pan America topography in 5-minute and 2-degree latitude-longitude resolutions

The following is the analysis that is used in version 4.1 of the PACS document.

The idea of the figure is that the left panel shows the real topography and the right panel shows how poorly the topography is resolved in a state-of-the-art climate model. The problem with this analysis is that the "real" analysis (left panel) is blurry and does not show features like Baja California or the Caribbean islands that well. In short, it doesn't look particularly real. I have made a new pair of analyses, one for the left panel and one for the right panel, in which each panel is drawn to fill an 8.5 by 11 inch piece of paper. I provide a colorbar with the left panel, the units are in meters, and the colorbar is the same for the left and right panels. I am hoping that if I leave the shrinking of the panels to one-column width to your group then the figure that appears in the printed document will be more detailed than what we now have.
  • left panel PostScript (234 Mbytes!!!) | PDF (9 Mbytes) | JPEG (<1 Mbyte)
  • right panel PostScript (<1 Mbyte) | PDF (<1 Mbyte) | JPEG (<1 Mbyte)
    We will need to modify the figure caption to describe the effective resolution of the left panel and that will depend on the effective dots per inch of the printed document. If you can tell me that number, then I can calculate the effective spatial resolution of the left panel.
    Figure 7: Annual mean snow, soil moisture, and vegetation

    PDF file

    Figure notes
    Figure 8: Monsoon rainfall and circulation
    Kay Dewar cleaned up the figure that was provided, I presume, by someone at NCEP.

    PDF file | PostScript file

    The above figure uses different upper limits for rainfall shading for the two plots for some reason, and the units are for seasonal rainfall totals so mm rainfall per 3 month season. I replotted the Figure 8 rainfall using color scales with more gradations and chose the limits so that the central U.S. had rain and that the Amazon basin had "lots of rain." The second attempt uses the maximum number of gradations on Freud. I noticed that print version of Figure 1 actually showed gradations that are not apparent on the screen version. My units are cm / month.

    The following has more gradations in color.
    Figure 10: North American monsoon latitude-time section

    Notes on data sets and a reference for this paper.
    Figure 17: Seasonal march of snow cover.

    Transparency version

    Print version, one-column width
    Candace, please add calendar month annotation as in transparency version.

    Print version, 4.5 inch width
    Candace, please add calendar month annotation as in transparency version.

    Figure caption: Seasonal march of snowcover. Contours delineate mountainous regions.

    Figure note: United States Air Force Environmental Technical Applications Center snow climatology from the ISLSCP Intiative 1: 1987-1988 CD-ROM. Topography contour is 1500m.
    Foster, D. J. and R. D. Davy, 1988: Global snow depth climatology. USAF ETAC/TN-88/006, Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, 48p.
    Figure 18: July minus June precipitation difference


    PostScript file

    Figure 18. Climatological mean July minus June precipitation (cm/month). Elevation contour of 1500 m.
    I tried this analysis with several different precipitation data sets: Legates/MSU, CMAP, CAMS-OPI, GPCP, and University of Delaware. To simplify comparisons, image files are provided for a sampling of the data sets I tried are linked here. Each image file link will launch a WWW window so that you can jump from one analysis to another. Click on each of the links and then jump between windows to compare the analyses.
    CMAP (Xie and Arkin) | Legates/MSU (used in original PACS document) | CAMS-OPI

    PostScript files for the different analyses are provided in the following links.
    CMAP (Xie and Arkin) | Legates/MSU (used in original PACS document) | CAMS-OPI
    I also looked at the GPCP and University of Delaware (UD) precipitation data sets. The UD analyses, which are for land only, are presented here for the interested surfer. For the PACS document the desire is to have both land and ocean values so the UD analysis won't be used. image | PostScript file
    Figure 19: Interannual variability of the leaf area index


    PostScript

    This is the best that I could do with a color scheme. Please improve upon the colors if you can, and send me whatever colormap you come up with (I always need more, effective color schemes). The leaf area index is a measure of photosynthesis and this map is an indicator of where the amount of photosynthesis varies a lot from year to year. The bottom line is that the photosynthesis doesn't vary much in the Amazon basin from year to year. The choice of colors should draw your eye to places where there is a lot of variation of photosynthesis from one year to the next. If it is easy to do, could someone "white out" the Great Lakes and crop the analysis at the coastlines as this analysis is only for land.
    Figure 32: Time series of warm season rainfall


    PostScript

    The time series are updated from what appears in the 1998 PACS planning document. There is one bar per year and you should be able to see space between each bar.
    Figure 35: ENSO influence on Atlantic hurricane landfall, 1886-2000


    PostScript | JPEG

    Figure 35. Hurricane positions on the last day that they exhibit hurricane-force winds during the (a) 25 warmest and (b) 25 coldest years in terms of sea surface temperature in the equatorial cold tongue region (6°N-6°S, 180-90°W) based on the period of record 1886-2000.
    Figure 36: ENSO influence on tropical cyclones and hurricanes, 1949-2000


    PostScript | JPEG

    Figure 36. Daily hurricane and tropical cyclone positions during the (a) 10 warmest and (b) 10 coldest years in terms of sea surface temperature in the equatorial cold tongue regions based on the period of record 1949-2000.
    Earlier figures and section numbers. For reference only.

    sections 1.2 | 1.9 | 2 | 6.4 | other analyses
    Section 1.2

    bimodal.eps, contributed by Wayne Higgins (whiggins@ncep.noaa.gov)
    Section 1.9

    hurricane.ps, contributed by Wayne Higgins (whiggins@ncep.noaa.gov)

    pineapple.eps, contributed by Wayne Higgins (whiggins@ncep.noaa.gov)
    Section 2

    fig1.ps, contributed by Wayne Higgins (whiggins@ncep.noaa.gov)


    fig2.eps, contributed by Wayne Higgins (whiggins@ncep.noaa.gov)
    Section 6.4

    namecov.ps, contributed by Wayne Higgins (whiggins@ncep.noaa.gov)

    topog.eps, contributed by Wayne Higgins (whiggins@ncep.noaa.gov)

    mex.ps, contributed by Wayne Higgins (whiggins@ncep.noaa.gov)

    americas.ps This version of the figure is contstructed to be easy for the graphics people to modify. The legend, symbols, and colors will be changed by Candace Gudmundson et al. (the graphics folks) to be easy to read and beautiful.
    Contributions from Wayne Higgins (whiggins@ncep.noaa.gov), Meghan Cronin (cronin@pmel.noaa.gov), and Dai McClurg (dai@pmel.noaa.gov)
    February 2001
    Todd Mitchell (mitchell@atmos.washington.edu)
    PACS