Evaluation of the near-surface climate of the recent global atmospheric reanalysis for Qilian Mountains, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Abstract In this study, temperature, air pressure, wind speed and precipitation from 19 basic stations over Qilian Mountains are used to evaluate the applicability for reanalysis datasets (ERA5, JRA-55, ERAI and HAR) during 1980–2018. The four global reanalysis products describe the state of the near-surface climate with different performances. The results show that (1) The four reanalysis products perform pretty satisfactorily for temperature and air pressure while the precipitation with the lowest quality; (2) ERA5 outperforms for most variables in correlation coefficients, especially for wind speed, but not significantly improved than EARI of other variables; (3) Overestimate of wind speed issues in HAR were also identified as the sub-grid orographic drag scheme is not included in WRF; (4) Despite some discrepancy, a warming trend is showed with all these four products; in addition, the decade from 1990 to 1999 has the fastest warming rate.