How well do the ERA‐Interim, ERA‐5, GLDAS‐2.1 and NCEP‐R2 reanalysis datasets represent daily air temperature over the Tibetan Plateau?

Abstract Snow and glacier are important components in the hydrological cycle of the Tibetan Plateau (TP). Air temperature, as the main driver in freezing and thawing processes, becomes vital for hydrological modelling and prediction in this region. Due to a sparse ground gauging network, spatial density of air temperature measurement is insufficient for hydro‐meteorological studies. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify the best representative temperature data for hydrological applications from four widely used reanalysis products, including ERA‐Interim, ERA‐5, GLDAS‐2.1 and NCEP‐R2, with reference to in situ measurements and gridded snow depth from the year 2008–2017 over the entire TP. To reduce errors, Bayesian Joint Probability (BJP) approach based on K‐Nearest Neighbour (KNN) classification algorithm (KNN‐BJP) is proposed to post‐process gridded reanalyses. The results indicate that all the reanalysis datasets provide highly correlated but cold biased air temperature. The correlation ecoefficiency is greater than 0.85. The cold biases are near −3 ° C and mainly distributed in the southeastern TP. Bias in daily maximum temperature during Spring is greater than −8 ° C for most stations. ERA‐Interim is found to have the closest agreement with in situ measurements, closely followed by GLDAS‐2.1. KNN‐BJP is found to be effective within a distance smaller than 5° . After post‐processing, the prominent underestimation is efficiently corrected with Bias near 0. RMSE is markedly reduced to be smaller than 2.5 ° C . The post‐processed ERA‐5 and GLDAS‐2.1 are as accurate as ERA‐Interim, but able to provide more detailed information for extreme events due to their finer spatial resolution. Thus, ERA‐5 and GLDAS‐2.1 are more recommended to represent air temperature in the TP. Snow depth as complementary reference data is able to present spatial variance of air temperature. Our study can help alleviate the problem of sparse air temperature data over the TP.