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

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.