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A Comparison of Global Surface Temperature Variability, Extremes and

Warming Trend using Reanalysis Data Sets and CMST-Interim

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DOI: 10.1002/joc.7551

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Received: 16 May 2021 Revised: 22 January 2022
DOI: 10.1002/joc.7551
RESEARCH ARTICLE
A comparison of global surface temperature variability,
extremes and warming trend using reanalysis datasets
and CMST-Interim
Yang Yang1 | Qingxiang Li1,2
1,2
Wenjie Dong
1
School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-
sen University, and Key Laboratory of
Tropical Atmosphere-Ocean System,
Ministry of Education, Zhuhai, China
2
Southern Laboratory of Ocean Science
and Engineering (Guangdong Zhuhai),
Zhuhai, China
Correspondence
Qingxiang Li, School of Atmospheric
Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai,
China.
Email: liqingx5@mail.sysu.edu.cn
Funding information
National Natural Science Foundation of
China, Grant/Award Number: 41975105;
National Key R&D Program of China,
Grant/Award Numbers: 2017YFC1502301,
2018YFC1507705
1 | INTRODUCTION
Surface temperature is a crucial indicator of global
climate change and one of the most important essential
climate variables. Nevertheless, there are still large
uncertainties within the widely used global surface tem-
perature observational datasets, mainly due to data
sparseness at high latitudes (IPCC, 2001; 2007; 2013).
Using global surface temperature datasets, numerous
studies estimate the global warming trend, especially for
the so-called “warming hiatus” period, that is, from 1998
Int J Climatol. 2022;1–20.
Accepted: 25 January 2022
| Zhaoyang Song1 | Wenbin Sun1 |
Abstract
Reanalysis data are widely used to investigate long-term surface temperature
changes due to insufficient spatial coverage of observational data. However,
because of the limitations of data assimilation and model performance in the
reanalysis datasets, it is essential to evaluate the quality of the reanalysis
datasets. Based on the newly released version of China global Merged Surface
Temperature dataset, Interim version (CMST-Interim), the performance of five
reanalysis datasets (ERA5, NCEP/NCAR R1, JRA-55, CERA-20C, and
20CRv3), covering more than 50 years, is compared in terms of long-term vari-
ation bias, warming trend, and the consistency of the extreme temperature
years from the period 1958–2010. The results reflect that the above reanalysis
datasets have reasonable representativeness of global temperature change.
ERA5 and 20CRv3 perform better than the other reanalysis datasets, with rela-
tively small deviation, their warming trends are closer to the observation
results, the appearance of extreme temperature years are also more consistent
with the observed, and CERA-20C is the next. JRA-55 is slightly better in
detecting the extremely cold years, while NCEP/NCAR R1 is slightly worse in
biases but performs well in high-temperature years reproduction.
KEYWORDS
bias, CMST-Interim, reanalysis datasets, surface temperature anomaly, trend
to 2012 (Cowtan and Way, 2014; Karl et al., 2015; Huang
et al., 2017; Simmons et al., 2017; Kadow et al., 2020; Li
et al., 2021). Additionally, reanalysis datasets can be used
to improve our understanding in terms of the global
warming trend, surface temperature variability, and
extremes (Ma et al., 2008; Mao et al., 2010; Li et al., 2017;
2021; Simmons et al., 2017). Because reanalysis datasets
provide complete coverage data in spatial and temporal
resolution relative to the observations, several reanalysis
datasets have been applied to climate research since the
1990s (IPCC, 2013). Simmons et al. (2017) and Li
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joc © 2022 Royal Meteorological Society 1
2 YANG ET AL.
et al. (2021) estimated the trend of global temperature
during the “warming hiatus” period using European Cen-
tre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)
reanalysis (ERA-Interim) and the fifth generation
ECMWF atmospheric reanalysis (ERA5) datasets, respec-
tively. Furthermore, these two datasets have also
achieved good results in regional climate research
(Goddard and Tett, 2019; Chao et al., 2020).
Current reanalysis datasets covering the period around
1979 fall into two main categories. One is to make use of
all assimilated data as much as possible. Such as the earli-
est National Centers for Environmental Prediction/
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR/NCEP)
Reanalysis (R1) (Kalnay et al., 1996), NCEP/U.S. Depart-
ment of Energy (DOE) Reanalysis 2 (NCEP/DOE R2)
(Kanamitsu et al., 2002), ERA-Interim (Dee et al., 2011)
and Climate Forecast System Reanalysis of NCEP (CFSR)
(Saha et al., 2010), the satellite data are assimilated since
1979 in these datasets. However, ECMWF Reanalysis
40-year (ERA-40) (Uppala et al., 2005), Japan Meteorologi-
cal Agency (JMA) 55-year Reanalysis (JRA-55) (Kobayshi
et al., 2015), and ERA5 (Hersbach et al., 2020) assimilate
VTPR satellite data since 1972/1973. The other is that sat-
ellite data are not assimilated, that is, only surface pressure
and marine winds are assimilated in all periods, including
two kinds of reanalysis datasets, namely Twentieth Cen-
tury Reanalysis version 3 (20CRv3) (Slivinski et al., 2019)
and ECMWF coupled twentieth-century reanalysis
(CERA-20C) (Laloyaux et al., 2018). Each of the two types
of data has its distinctive characteristics. The first type
may have higher precision because they assimilate more
data, but there may be discontinuities between the two
periods before and after assimilating satellite data
(Sturaro, 2003). The second type is less sensitive to this
homogeneity problem, but no matter before or after 1970,
because the amount of assimilated data is significantly
lower than that of the first type, the accuracy of the latter
reanalysis data may be significantly lower than that of the
first type. However, with the improvement of the model
and assimilation technology, the accuracy of the latter type
of reanalysis data is also improving (Poli et al., 2016;
Slivinski et al., 2019). Therefore, it is vital to assess various
reanalysis datasets in terms of their similarities and differ-
ences in the representation of global and regional surface
temperature change.
Based on the in situ observations or satellite data,
there have been many efforts made to evaluate the
reanalysis products for surface air temperature in previ-
ous studies. For example, some studies have been
assessed the accuracy of the variability and trend of sur-
face temperature for reanalysis data in many areas, such
as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China, the United States,
central Asia, Africa, the Polar Regions, and so on
(Ma et al., 2008; Vose et al., 2012; Hu et al., 2014; Luo
et al., 2019; Retamales-Muñoz et al., 2019; Przybylak and
Wyszy nski, 2020; Balmaceda-Huarte et al., 2021; Engdaw
et al., 2022; Zhu et al., 2021). On the one hand, it is help-
ful to quantitatively identify the contributions to global
warming from various regions (Simmons and Poli, 2015).
On the other hand, it could improve the applicability of
reanalysis data in the models, like the arid and semi-arid
region and permafrost region (Qin et al., 2020; Huai
et al., 2021). These analyses focus on the regional perfor-
mance of surface temperature reanalyses, but there have
been fewer global evaluations for the latest versions of
reanalyses. The assessments of low-frequency and trends
of global temperature from ERA-40, ERA-Interim, ERA5,
and JRA-55 show similar estimates of global-mean sur-
face warming and interannual variability compared with
several conventional analyses (Kobayshi et al., 2015;
Simmons et al., 2017; 2021; Hersbach et al., 2020). The
recent release of the preliminary version of the ERA5
reanalysis back extension from 1950 to 1978 from
ECWMF (Bell et al., 2021) provides a basis for being able
to assess the performance of state-of-the-art reanalysis
datasets over a relatively long period, yet the evaluations
are focused on the period of 1979 afterward.
This paper aims to better quantify and detailed evalu-
ate the global surface temperature from reanalyses. Five
widely used state-of-the-art reanalysis datasets, namely
ERA5, NCAR/NCEP R1, CERA-20C, 20CRv3, and JRA-
55, covering data from both the periods of pre-1979 and
post 1979, are compared in this paper. The surface tem-
perature biases, extreme values, and the warming trends
will be evaluated against the newly released global sur-
face temperature dataset CMST-Interim to provide a ref-
erence for the applicability of the reanalysis datasets in
climate change trend research. The paper is organized as
follows. In section 2, we describe the benchmark dataset,
the reanalysis datasets, and methodology used in this
study. In section 3, we present a comprehensive compari-
son on the representation of surface temperature anom-
aly biases, trends, and extremes among the reanalysis
datasets. The results are summarized in section 4.
2 | DATA AND M ETHODOLOGY
2.1 | Data
2.1.1 | China global Merged Surface
Temperature, Interim version
As described by Jones and Harpham (2013), average tem-
peratures for the hemispheres and the globe are generally
expressed as anomalies from a base period, and
YANG ET AL.
anomalies are perfectly adequate for use in climate moni-
toring. In general, observation datasets such as
HadCRUT (5
× 5
), NOAAGlobalTemp (5
× 5
), BEST
(Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature, 1
× 1
), and
GISSTEM (2
× 2
) are widely used as benchmarks on
the validation/comparison of the other climatic datasets
(including satellite, reanalysis, models output and other
merged datasets) (Cowtan et al., 2015; Li et al., 2017;
Simmons et al., 2017, 2021; Beusch et al., 2020; Cook
et al., 2020). CMST is a newly developed global surface
temperature (ST) anomaly dataset that only uses in-situ
observations (no satellite observations included), the ST
trends derived from it are broadly similar to those from
the above benchmark datasets (Li et al., 2020; 2021).
Recently, the newly released IPCC AR6 has cited it as
one of the benchmark datasets to calculate global/
regional warming trends (Gulev et al., 2021). In addition,
comparisons between CMST-Interim and the latest ver-
sion of other two classic benchmark datasets HadCRUT5
(Morice et al., 2021) and NOAAGlobalTemp5 (Huang et
al., 2020) are shown in Supporting Information. As
shown in Figures S1 and S2, the long-term and inter-
annual variabilities in both global and regional scales
obtained from these three datasets are generally consis-
tent with each other, as well as the spatial distributions.
CMST is merged by China global Land Surface Air
Temperature (C-LSAT) and Extended Reconstructed Sea
Surface Temperature (ERSST) (Yun et al., 2019; Li
et al., 2020; Sun et al., 2021). The original version of C-
LSAT 1.0 is a homogenized monthly global land surface
temperature dataset developed by 14 data sources, includ-
ing 3 global (CRUTEM4 from the Climatic Research Unit
(CRU) of the University of East Anglia, Global Historical
Climatology Network (GHCN) dataset from National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National
Center for Environment Information, and Berkeley Earth
Surface Temperature (BEST) dataset), 3 regions, and
8 national sources (see Table S1), spanning from 1900–
2014 (see also Xu et al., 2018, table 1). To further evaluate
global warming since industrialization, C-LSAT 2.0
extends the temporal coverage to 1850, and increases the
spatial coverage and station density. The most updated
version of C-LSAT used to develop CMST-Interim is C-
LSAT 2.0 ensemble (Li et al., 2020; 2021; Sun et al., 2021).
CMST-Interim is the latest version of CMST, which is rel-
ative to the climatic average over 1961–1990, a period is
chosen to satisfy the requirements of station data
processing (Xu et al., 2018), with a spatial resolution of
5
× 5
spanning from 1854 to 2018 (Sun et al., 2021).
Comparative analysis shows that the consistency of the
global warming trend derived from CMST has been
strengthened with other similar datasets since 1880
(Li et al., 2020). In particular, during the debated
3
“warming hiatus” period from 1998 to 2012, the warming
trend estimated from the CMST agrees well with that cal-
culated from datasets in which northern high latitudes
are filled with satellite data, buoy observations, and
reanalysis data (Li et al., 2021). Recently, combined with
observation constraints, 756 ensemble C-LSAT 2.0 mem-
bers are reconstructed using high-frequency and low-
frequency components from 1854 to 2018. The ensemble
members are then merged with the ERSSTv5 to obtain
the CMST-Interim dataset. CMST-Interim significantly
improves the coverage of global surface temperature data
compared to the original CMST. The reconstruction
increases the data coverage from 78–81% to 81–89% prior
to 1950. The total coverage reaches about 93% from 1953
onwards. In addition, the description of multiscale
changes of global and regional land surface temperature is
more accurate (Sun et al., 2021). However, it is worth noting
that due to the lack of information on the variation of sea
ice cover over time (interannual and seasonal), the CMST-
Interim still adopts the fixed values for sea surface tempera-
ture (SST; the missing value is set to −1.8
C) like ERSSTv5
in the Arctic sea ice covered area, rather than the simple
land air temperature extrapolation method utilized in some
recent studies (Osborn et al., 2021; Vose et al., 2021). As for
the Antarctic region, due to the sparse observations, there
still are certain problems in the reconstructed CMST-
Interim series (Sun et al., 2021), so observation constraints
are made on the reanalysis datasets.
2.1.2 | Reanalysis datasets
ERA5 (Hersbach et al., 2020) is the fifth generation
ECMWF atmospheric reanalysis of the global climate,
spanning from January 1950 to the present, splitting into
back extension from 1950 to 1978 (preliminary version)
and from 1979 onwards. ERA5 uses the Integrated Fore-
casting System (IFS) Cy41r2 and significantly enhances
the temporal, horizontal and vertical resolutions com-
pared to its predecessor ERA-Interim. The horizontal res-
olution is 31 km, with 137 vertical levels in the
atmosphere from the surface up to 0.01 hPa. ERA5 pro-
vides hourly estimates for a large number of atmospheric,
land and oceanic climate variables, 3-hourly uncertainty
estimates, and a timely real-time product within 5 days.
NCEP/NCAR R1 (Kalnay et al., 1996; Kistler et al., 2001)
is the first modern reanalysis dataset produced by NCEP
and NCAR forecast model revised in 1995, spanning
from January 1948 onwards. NCEP/NCAR reanalysis
data assimilation system consists of the NCEP Medium
Range Forecasting (MRF) spectral model and a three-
dimensional variational (3D-var) analysis scheme. The
horizontal resolution of NCEP/NCAR R1 is T62 Gaussian
4 YANG ET AL.

grid (around 210 km), with 28 vertical levels from the
surface up to 3 hPa. It provides 6-hourly analysis and
pressure fields on a 2.5
latitude-longitude grid. ECMWF
coupled 20th-century reanalysis (CERA-20C) is the
10-member ensemble of coupled climate reanalyses of
the 20th century, produced from the European
Reanalysis of Global Climate Observations Project (ERA-
CLIM2), which provides global atmospheric data for the
period 1901–2010. CERA-20C uses IFS Cy41r2 modelling
and the CERA data assimilation system and assimilates
surface pressure and marine winds observations as well
as ocean temperature and salinity profiles with an incre-
ment four-dimensional variational (4D-Var) analysis. The
horizontal resolution is 125 km horizontal grid with
91 vertical levels between the surface and 0.01 hPa
(Laloyaux et al., 2018). 20CRv3 (Slivinski et al., 2019;
2021) is generated by the National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration's Cooperative Institute for
Research in Environmental Sciences (NOAA/CIRES),
and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The latest ver-
sion NOAA-CIRES-DOE 20CR version 3 spans from 1836
to 2015. 20CRv3 uses an 80-member ensemble Kalman
filter to assimilate a larger set of surface pressure observa-
tions into an updated NCEP Global Forecast System
(GFS) model, version 14.0.1, relative to its predecessor
20CRv2, with a spectral horizontal resolution of T254
(effectively 60 km at the equator) and a vertical atmo-
spheric resolution of 64 levels up to about 0.3 hPa. It pro-
vides a 3-hr global atmospheric estimate by assimilating
observed surface pressure and specifying sea surface tem-
perature, sea ice concentration, and radiation forcing.
JRA-55 (Kobayshi et al., 2015) is the second Japanese
global atmospheric reanalysis generated by the JMA and
is also called the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis. It covers
the period of 1958 to the present and uses the TL319 ver-
sion of JMA's global spectral model system with
incremental 4D-Var, which is improved compared to
JRA-25, and with an increased model resolution of TL319
(about 55 km) in horizontal and 60 vertical levels
between the surface to 0.1 hPa. In addition, JRA-55 adds
a new bias correction procedure for satellite data and
other observations. It offers atmospheric analysis, screen-
level analysis, and land surface analysis with a 6-hr
resolution.
2.2 | Methodology
To perform the differences and agreements between the
five global reanalyses and CMST-Interim, the results are
compared spanning the common period 1958–2010. Due
to the five reanalyses being in different resolutions
(Table 1), all reanalyses have been re-interpolated
and reduced to consistent with the 5
× 5
grid of
CMST-Interim's grid using a bilinear interpolation
method. Then, surface temperature anomalies from all
reanalysis datasets have been also calculated from the
corresponding reference period 1961–1990. The seasonal
analysis is carried out for March–April–May (MAM),
June–July–August (JJA), September–October–November
(SON), and December–January–February (DJF). Because
of the scarcity of observation data in the Antarctic (high-
latitude area in the Southern Hemisphere, taking the
north of 60
S here), this region is not included in the
comparison. Based on the processed datasets, the root-
mean-square error (RMSE), mean bias error (MBE), Pear-
son linear correlation coefficient (CC), probability density
function (PDF) skill score, and the ranking score in
extreme years are used to quantify the accuracy or differ-
ences between the observation and estimated STA from
each reanalysis dataset. Moreover, the time series and its
bias over the global, regional and zonal STA are

TABLE 1 Description for CMST-Interim and five reanalysis datasets

Spatial
Abbreviation Full name resolution Time period Reference



CMST- China Merged Surface Temperature-Interim 5 ×5 Jan 1854–Dec Sun et al. (2021)
Interim 2018
ERA5 Fifth generation ECMWF reanalysis 0.25
× 0.25
Jan 1950–present Hersbach et
al. (2020)
NCEP1 NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis 2.5
× 2.5
Jan 1948–present Kalnay et al. (1996)



CERA-20C ECMWF's Coupled Reanalysis of the Twentieth 1.0 × 1.0 Jan 1901–Dec Laloyaux
Century 2010 et al. (2018)
20CRv3 NOAA-CIRES-DOE Twentieth Century 1.0
× 1.0
Jan 1836–Dec Slivinski
Reanalysis (V3) 2015 et al. (2019)
JRA-55 Japanese 55-year Reanalysis 1.25
× 1.25
Jan 1958–present Kobayshi
et al. (2015)
YANG ET AL.
compared spanning the common period 1958–2010. Since
the time scales of CREA-20C and 20CRv3 are more than
a century, the time series of their annual variations for
1901–2018 are also compared with CMST-Interim.
2.2.1 | Error analysis
Root-mean-square error
Root-mean-square error (RMSE) is a measure for the
mean error derived from the sum of squared errors,
which is defined as follows:
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
1X n tainty ranges, that is, when the uncertainty ranges of the
RMSE = ðxi−yiÞ2 , ð1Þ
n i=1
where n represents the number of samples, xi is the tem-
perature anomaly of the reanalysis data, and yi is the
temperature anomaly of the CMST-Interim. RMSE indi-
cates the random difference between reanalysis datasets
and the CMST-Interim.
Mean bias error
Mean bias error (MBE) is an average of bias errors,
expressed as follows:
1X n
MBE= ðxi −yiÞ: ð2Þ
n i=1
MBE is intended to measure average bias from the
reanalysis data to the CMST-Interim.
2.2.2 | PDF skill scores
Perkins et al. (2007) proposed the use of probability den-
sity functions (PDFs) to evaluate the ability of climate
models to simulate the entire distributions of a simulated
variable. PDFs calculated from the model data are com-
pared against those obtained from the observational data.
A large overlapping area between the simulated and
observed PDFs refers to better performance of the models
and vice versa. Relative to mean or standard deviation,
PDF provides a more robust and straightforward measure
for the similarity between the observed and modelled
PDFs. In this paper, we compare the relative similarity
between CMST-Interim and reanalysis datasets. The bin
size of the temperature anomaly is 0.05
C. According to
Perkins et al. (2007), a skill score of 1.0 suggests that the
two PDFs are completely coincident, while a skill score
of 0.0 suggests that the PDFs are independent of each
other.
5
2.2.3 | Other metrics for consistency of
surface temperature anomaly
Trend and uncertainty
The long-term trend is calculated by the method of
restricted maximum likelihood regression to assess the
change in STA over time, and its 95% confidence level
(~1.96 sigma) is taken as the uncertainty range. The
REML method is the basic method used to calculate cli-
mate change trend since IPCC Third Assessment Report
(Li et al., 2021). We also test whether there are significant
differences between the trends obtained from the
observed and reanalysed data by the overlap of uncer-
two trends do not overlap, it is considered that these two
trends are significantly different.
Ranking score in extreme years
To measure the consistency of yearly extreme high and
low temperature between the observations and reanalysis
datasets, we propose a ranking score to assess the ability
of reanalysis datasets to capture extreme temperatures,

absðOi −RiÞ , absðOi −RiÞ ≤ 10
Scorei= , ð3Þ
10 , absðOi− RiÞ > 10
X
n
Score = 100 − Scorei, ð4Þ
i=1
where i is the order, n is the total number of ranking
(10 is taken). Oi denotes the order of the ranked year for
CMST-Interim (i = 1, 2, …, n), and Ri represents the order
of the ith year derived from CMST-Interim in ranked
reanalysis data. For example, if 2007 is located at the first
in the observation ranking and 5th in the reanalysis rank-
ing, then Oi is 1, Ri is 5. The original score for each
reanalysis dataset is set to 100. If the ranking (top
10 extreme records) obtained from the reanalysis datasets
is consistent with observations, the score will not be
changed. Otherwise, the difference will be subtracted
from the score. A maximum of 10 for the difference can
be subtracted from the original score.
3 | RESULTS
3.1 | Systematic and random biases
3.1.1 | Spatial distribution
Mean bias error
Figure 1 shows the spatial distributions of MBE for the
annual STA between the reanalysis datasets and the
6 YANG ET AL.

90°N 90°N 90°N

60°N 60°N 60°N
30°N 30°N 30°N
0 0 0
30°S 30°S 30°S
60°S 60°S 60°S
180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180 180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180 180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180

90°N 90°N
60°N 60°N
30°N 30°N
0 0
30°S 30°S
60°S 60°S
180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180 180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180

F I G U R E 1 Mean bias errors (MBEs) for annual surface temperature anomalies in (a) ERA5, (b) NCEP1, (c) CERA-20C, (d) 20CRv3 and
(e) JRA-55 over 1958–2010 relative to CMST-Interim (unit:
C). All anomalies are calculated relative to the 1961–1990 reference period
[Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

CMST-Interim (hereafter referred to as observation) from
1958 to 2010. Overall, the global averaged MBEs are
small: −0.01
C for 20CRv3, 0
C for ERA5, and 0.01
C for
CERA-20C, followed by −0.03
C for JRA-55 and −0.04
C
for NCEP/NCAR R1. Except for NCEP/NCAR R1 and
JRA-55, other reanalysis datasets agree better with obser-
vation at mid and low latitudes than at high latitudes, the
MBEs are within about ±0.2
C in mid and low latitudes.
The MBEs of NCEP/NCAR R1 in Sahara, South America,
Australia, and the Tibet Plateau are about −0.2
C or less,
and the MBEs reach ±0.2
C in some regions of Australia,
Iranian Plateau, and central Africa computed from JRA-
55. While the MBEs derived from all these data reach
over 0.3
C near the Arctic. The spatial patterns of MBEs
for seasonal STA in 5 reanalysis datasets (see Figure S3)
are similar to their annual distributions and the global
averaged errors slightly increase. The global averaged
MBEs in NCEP/NCAR R1 and JRA-55 are negative in all
seasons, and all reanalysis data exhibit negative global
averaged MBEs in JJA. Especially, the absolute values of
global averaged MBE are larger in JJA than in the other
seasons, while CERA-20C exhibits the maximum value
in SON.
Root-mean-square error
As in Figure 2, spatial distributions of RMSEs in
reanalysis datasets show large errors at high latitude
while small at low and mid-latitude. This could be caused
by the observational data being underrepresented and
having coverage bias at high latitudes or at the border of
oceans and continents (Cowtan and Way, 2014; Cowtan
et al., 2015; Kobayshi et al., 2015; Morice et al., 2021;
Osborn et al., 2021). Overall, the minimum of global
mean RMSEs is amounting to 0.26
C in 20CRv3,
followed by ERA5, which amounts to 0.28
C, and CERA-
20C and JRA-55 are both 0.30
C, NCEP/NCAR R1 shows
the maximum RMSE of 0.34
C. Some regions of East
Asia, Africa, South America, and Australia show larger
RMSEs derived from NCEP/NCAR R1, CERA-20C, and
JRA-55 than that from the other two datasets in those
places, the RMSEs are able to reach 0.6
C or larger of
above three reanalyses. Regarding the seasonal variations
(see Figure S4), the maximum of global mean RMSEs
both occur in DJF, with values ranging from 0.45 to
0.54
C for all five reanalysis datasets.
3.1.2 | Temporal changes
Temporal changes of MBEs and RMSEs for annual STA
in five reanalysis data are investigated over the globe
(north of 60
S) from 1958 to 2010 (Figure 3a,b), MBEs
and RMSEs derived from ERA5 and 20CRv3 are much
smaller than those from NCEP/NCAR R1, CERA-20C,
and JRA-55, suggesting that global surface temperature
variation in ERA5 and 20CRv3 agree well with observa-
tion. Among them, MBE and RMSE for NCEP/NCAR R1
still indicate larger errors than the other datasets, espe-
cially since 1990. Additionally, CERA-20C shows evi-
dently larger MBE than the others after 2004. It should
be pointed out that the MBEs and RMSEs increased
slightly after 1990 for all reanalysis datasets. This is
because the comparisons of STA are all relative to the ref-
erence period 1961–1990, so the MBEs and RMSEs are
smaller in this period than those in the other times.
MBEs and RMSEs for monthly STA are shown in
Figure 3c,d. MBEs from five reanalysis datasets show
negative values from May through August, with the
YANG ET AL. 7

maximum positive value in October. The maximum June. As for RMSEs, ERA5, and 20CRv3 exhibit smaller
values of MBEs are from CERA-20C in all positive RMSEs for all calendar months, while monthly errors for
months, while the minimum is from NCEP/NCAR R1 in NCEP/NCAR R1 and JRA-55 are relatively larger. The

90°N 90°N 90°N

60°N 60°N 60°N
30°N 30°N 30°N
0 0 0
30°S 30°S 30°S
60°S 60°S 60°S
180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180 180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180 180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180

90°N 90°N
60°N 60°N
30°N 30°N
0 0
30°S 30°S
60°S 60°S
180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180 180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180

FIGURE 2 Same as Figure 1, but for root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) (unit:
C) [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

F I G U R E 3 MBEs and RMSEs for (a, b) annual and (c, d) monthly surface temperature anomalies from 1958 to 2010. (unit:
C) [Colour
figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
8 YANG ET AL.

maximum values of reanalyses occur in January (except smaller in ERA5, CERA-20C, and 20CRv3 than in NCEP/
for NCEP/NCAR R1 is in October). A similar conclusion NCAR R1 and JRA-55. It shows that the surface tempera-
can be seen in the map of the temporal evolution of the ture anomalies are more concentrated from the above
spatial distribution (see Figures S3 and S4). three reanalysis datasets relative to CMST-Interim.

3.2 | Comparisons of annual 3.2.2 | Pearson correlation coefficients

temperature anomaly
3.2.1 | Distributions of scattered points
Averaged temperature anomalies over 1958–2010 at each
5
× 5
grid (north of 60
S) from five reanalysis datasets
are compared against CMST-Interim in Figure 4. ERA5
and 20CRv3 (coefficient of determination R2 are 0.52) are
more comparable to observation than the other reanalysis
(R2 are within 0.5). The scatter distributions of ERA5 and
20CRv3 are closer to the diagonal line. In contrast,
because of many high- and low-temperature anomalies
in NCEP/NCAR R1, CERA-20C, and JRA-55, the scatter
points of these three reanalysis data deviate significantly
from the diagonal line in Figure 4b,c,e. It implies that the
temperature data in NCEP/NCAR R1, CERA-20C, and
JRA-55 are less consistent with observation than ERA5
and 20CRv3. Moreover, the “spotlight” regions, that is,
the areas with the largest scattering point density, are
To assess the interannual variability of reanalysis temper-
ature datasets (Bell et al., 2021), we examined the Pear-
son correlation coefficient (CCs) of surface temperature
anomaly between reanalysis datasets and observation
(Figure 5). It is evident that the reanalysis data have high
CCs with CMST-Interim, and the global average (north
of 60
S) CCs reach about 0.8. Only CC between NCEP/
NCAR R1 and observation is slightly lower but also
reaches 0.76, and the rest are JRA-55 (0.80), CERA-20C
(0.82), ERA5(0.82), and 20CRv3 (0.85). As for spatial dis-
tributions of CC, the higher CC is mainly concentrated in
the middle and high latitudes of the Northern Hemi-
sphere, except for central and northern Africa, South
America, and the Tibet Plateau have lower CCs. In addi-
tion, the CC in the mid-latitudes ocean of the Southern
Hemisphere is slightly lower. This also agrees well with
the results obtained by Simmons et al. (2021) for ERA-5
and JRA-55.

(a) 4 (b) 4 (c) 4 1

R 2 = 0.52 R 2 = 0.46 R 2 = 0.47
0.8

2 2 2

Density
0.6

0.4
0 0 0
0.2

–2 –2 –2 0
–0.5 0 0.5 1 –0.5 0 0.5 1 –0.5 0 0.5 1

(d) 4 2
(e) 4 2
1
R = 0.52 R = 0.49
0.8

2 2
Density

0.6

0.4
0 0
0.2

–2 –2 0
–0.5 0 0.5 1 –0.5 0 0.5 1

F I G U R E 4 Density scatter plot of mean surface temperature anomalies on the global grid (north of 60
S) for 1958–2010 from each of
five reanalysis datasets, (a) ERA5, (b) NCEP1, (c) CERA-20C, (d) 20CRv3, (e) JRA-55, and observation. The solid line shows the linear least
squares relationship between the reanalysis and the observed, the dash line indicates 1–1. R2 is the coefficient of determination [Colour
figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
YANG ET AL. 9

90°N 90°N 90°N

60°N 60°N 60°N
30°N 30°N 30°N
0 0 0
30°S 30°S 30°S
60°S 60°S 60°S
180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180 180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180 180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180

90°N 90°N
60°N 60°N
30°N 30°N
0 0
30°S 30°S
60°S 60°S
180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180 180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180

F I G U R E 5 Correlations of annual surface temperature anomalies between (a) ERA5, (b) NCEP1, (c) CERA-20C, (d) 20CRv3, (e) JRA-55
and CMST-Interim for 1958–2010. The results are significant at the 95% confidence level using a Student's t test [Colour figure can be viewed
at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

F I G U R E 6 (a) Annual, (b) March–April–May (MAM), (c) June–July–August (JJA), (d) September–October–November (SON), and
(e) December–January–February (DJF) PDFs skill scores of surface temperature anomalies in five reanalysis datasets for 1958–2010 over the
globe (north of 60
S) [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

3.2.3 | PDF skill scores
PDFs for annual and seasonal temperature anomalies at
each grid (north of 60
S) are computed from 1958 to
2010. Observed seasonal temperature anomalies exhibit a
slightly higher probability around 0
C than reanalysis
datasets. The annual probabilities are more consistent
than the seasonal (Figure S5). The PDFs of ERA5, CERA-
20C, and 20CRv3 are more consistent with the observed
PDF. NCEP/NCAR R1 has a slightly worse seasonal per-
formance. It is accordant with the results of skill scores
for PDFs (Figure 6). On the whole, reanalysis datasets
10 YANG ET AL.

provide good representations of the global annual and
seasonal temperature distributions. Skill scores for PDFs
are generally larger than 0.9. The skill scores are larger in
ERA5, CERA-20C, and 20CRv3, which reach about 0.95
or above for the PDFs of annual and seasonal tempera-
ture anomalies.
3.2.4 | Comparison of the time series
between reanalysis datasets and CMST-Interim
Global mean surface temperature anomalies
To display the annual STA variations of reanalysis
datasets for as long as possible, we evaluate the global
mean (north of 60
S) annual STA for long time records
over a long common period of 1901–2018, which not only
includes the variations of CERA-20C, and 20CRv3 on the
century time scales, but also exhibits the performance of
NCEP/NCAR R1, ERA5, and JRA-55 in recent decades.
For these relatively short records, they are shown in their
respective starting years (Figure 7a). The common period
1958–2010 is labelled with vertical lines in Figures 7–9 to
highlight the performance of these datasets in the same
period. Again, monthly temperature anomalies are
calculated over the common period 1958–2010
(Figure 7c). Differences between all reanalysis data and
the observation are shown in Figure 7b,d. As can be seen
from the annual temperature anomalies, all the
reanalysis datasets show an obviously warming trend,
and the interannual variability also agrees well with
CMST-Interim (Figure 7a,b). CERA-20C and 20CRv3
have noticeably larger amplitudes before the 1940s but
smaller amplitudes around 1940, compared with CMST-
Interim. The overall deviations of ERA5 and 20CRv3 are
less than that of others. There is a slightly large ampli-
tude in CERA-20C after the 1990s, while NCEP/NCAR
R1 and JRA-55 show smaller amplitudes than the obser-
vation (Figure 7b). ERA5, CERA-20C, and 20CRv3
describe better than NCEP/NCAR R1 and JRA-55 in
monthly temperature changes, with slightly small ampli-
tude in spring and summer and large amplitude in
autumn and winter. NCEP/NCAR R1 and JRA-55 show
small amplitudes in all months (Figure 7c,d).
Regional surface temperature anomalies
Following the regional division by Xu et al. (2018),
we compared annual land surface air temperature varia-
tions in different regions (Figure 8). Compared with

F I G U R E 7 (a) The annual mean of 1901–2018 and (c) monthly mean of 1958–2010 for surface temperature anomalies from five
reanalysis datasets and CMST-Interim over the globe (north of 60
S). Differences in the (b) annual mean and (d) monthly mean data
between reanalysis datasets and CMST-Interim. The vertical lines indicate the common period 1958–2010 [Colour figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]
YANG ET AL. 11

F I G U R E 8 (a–g) Annual surface temperature anomalies from five reanalysis datasets and CMST-Interim for 1901–2018 in different
regions. Differences in the (a1–g1) annual STA between reanalysis datasets and CMST-Interim for 1901–2018. The vertical lines indicate the
common period 1958–2010 [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

CMST-Interim in Asia (5
–60
N, 60
–180
E), reanalysis
datasets overestimate surface temperatures before the
1940s, afterward slightly underestimate temperatures in
the past decade. Especially, NCEP/NCAR R1 shows an
obvious warm period from 1948 to 1955 (Figure 8a).
Averaged differences over Asia are relatively smaller in
ERA5, CERA-20C, and JRA-55 (Figure 8a1). Over Africa
(40
S–35
N, 20
W–45
E), CERA-20C slightly underesti-
mates temperature anomalies during 1901–1940. In
ERA5, temperature anomalies are underestimated over
1950–1960, afterward overestimated in the past decade.
Compared to the observations, NCEP/NCAR R1 and
CERA-20C consistently underestimate the anomalies in
the past three decades (Figure 8b, b1). Reanalysis datasets
do not agree on the temperature evolution over South
America (55
S–15
N, 30
–80
E). For instance, CERA-20C
and 20CRv3 overestimate the anomalies in 1901–1960. In
NCEP/NCAR R1, temperature anomalies are not much
different from CMST-Interim prior to 1990, then under-
estimated from 1990 onwards. CERA-20C shows a large
amplitude in the mid-1980s (Figure 8c, c1). In Europe
(35
–60
N, 15
W–60
E), the good agreements between
reanalyses and the observation from 1958 onwards,
which is similar to the results of those obtained by Bell
et al. (2021) for comparison between ERA-5, JRA-55 and
observational climatological datasets for the 1950–2020
period, but the defined range for Europe is slightly differ-
ent. There are large discrepancies between observations
and reanalysis datasets conspicuously prior to the 1940s.
CERA-20C and 20CRv3 exhibit large positive differences
relative to CMST-Interim, by up to 1
C in 1920. Similarly,
NCEP/NCAR R1 also shows too warm anomalies from
1948 to 1958. Differences in temperature anomalies for
all reanalysis datasets slightly decrease from 1960
onwards, except that ERA5 slightly overestimates warm
anomalies in the past two decades (Figure 8d, d1).
Regarding North America (15
–60
N, 140
–50
W)
(Figure 8e, e1), CERA-20C and 20CRv3 demonstrate
warm differences by up to 1
C prior to 1950. From 1960
onwards, differences between reanalysis data and obser-
vations profoundly decrease. The overall temperature dif-
ferences in ERA5 and JRA-55 are smaller compared to
other datasets. Reanalysis datasets exhibit larger differ-
ences from CMST-Interim in Australia (15
–50
S, 110
–
12
F I G U R E 9 (a–e) Annual surface temperature anomalies from five reanalysis datasets and CMST-Interim for 1901–2018 in different
latitudes. Differences in (a1–e1) annual STA between reanalysis datasets and CMST-Interim for 1901–2018. The vertical lines indicate the
common period 1958–2010 [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
150
W) compared to other regions, particularly over
recent years (Figure 8f, f1). For ERA5, there is a large
positive difference in the earliest period of its coverage,
which is partly due to insufficient initialization of deep
soil moisture (Bell et al., 2021). However, 20CRv3 shows
smaller differences than other datasets in the common
period. Over the land in the northern high latitudes (60
–
90
N, land) (Figure 8g, g1), CERA-20C and 20CRv3 show
a warm deviation in 1901–1930. From 1960 onwards,
except for 20CRv3, the deviations of the rest reanalysis
data are relatively small.
Figure 9 shows the annual temperature variations
and deviations in different latitudes from 1901 to 2018.
At low latitudes (Figure 9a, a1 and b, b1), the annual var-
iations of CMST-Interim and reanalysis data are more
consistent, especially after 1960. The deviation between
reanalysis datasets and observation is within ±0.2
C.
Before 1960, CERA-20C and 20CRv3 show large ampli-
tudes. The deviation at mid-latitudes in the Northern
Hemisphere (Figure 9c, c1) is similar to that at low lati-
tudes. NCEP/NCAR R1 has a significantly large ampli-
tude from 1948 to 1958. CERA-20C and 20CRv3 show
large amplitudes before 1940, and the deviations are sig-
nificantly reduced after 1960. At southern mid-latitudes,
CERA-20C and 20CRv3 show small amplitudes before
1950, and then the deviations of all reanalysis are rela-
tively small (Figure 9d, d1). Compared to low and middle
latitudes, the deviation at northern high latitudes has
YANG ET AL.
increased significantly (Figure 9e, e1), especially before
1950 for CERA-20C and 20CRv3. The deviation in the
past 20 years has shown an increasing trend. Although
the above STA deviations are relatively small from 1960
to 1990, it is related to the selection of this period as the
climatological reference period.
3.3 | Trends analysis
Spatial distribution
The temporal trend and its spatial distribution for the
common periods 1958–2010 are examined. Figure 10
shows the spatial distribution of the trends in STA from
CMST-Interim and reanalysis datasets. As can be seen in
Figure 10a, the global warming trend is obvious, particu-
larly in Eurasian and northern North America, which is
consistent with the results obtained by Simmons et al.
(2004) and Vose et al. (2005), although their study period
is earlier, and it is also similar to Simmons et al. (2021)
for the recent 40-year period from 1979 to 2018 for the
ERA5 and JRA-55. The trends from the reanalysis data
are generally consistent with the observation, and only in
sporadic areas are significantly different (Figure 10b–f).
Among all datasets, ERA5 captures most of these
warming trends, only the trends of sporadic places differ
significantly from observation, such as very small areas
in the Arabian Peninsula and northern South America,
YANG ET AL. 13

and in the ocean. The warming trend of 20CRv3 data is
also similar to the observation, in which there are obvi-
ous differences in the trends of the small regions of the
Barents Sea, Greenland Sea, southernmost South Amer-
ica, and mid-latitude in the Southern Hemisphere. In
addition, there are a few areas with significant differences
in CERA-20C trends, which generally appear in the
ocean. In contrast, NCEP/NCAR R1 data misses the
warming in the small regions of Sahara, northern South
America, southeast Australia, the Tibet Plateau, and the
ocean near the Arctic and mid-latitudes of the Southern
Hemisphere. JRA-55 data fails to capture the observed
warming trend in northern South America, southern
Australia, some areas on the ocean (Figure 10b–f). The
surface temperature trends in the reanalysis datasets do
not show much seasonality, neither do their differences
from the observations (see Figure S6). Among them,
there are significant differences in the warming trend of
western Africa and southern mid-latitude in JJA obtained
by CERA-20C (see Figure S6, d2).
Global and regional change
Temporal trends of global (north 60
S) annual and seasonal
surface temperature anomaly during 1958–2010 and their
uncertainties are listed in Table 2. In general, the trends of
annual and seasonal STA obtained from the reanalysis
datasets are not significantly different from the observation.
From the aspect of the trend magnitude, the warming
trends estimated from ERA5 (0.138 ± 0.022
Cdecade−1),
CERA-20C (0.143 ± 0.024
Cdecade−1), and 20CRv3
(0.136 ± 0.020
Cdecade−1) agree better with that from
CMST-Interim (0.145 ± 0.019
Cdecade−1), while NCEP/
NCAR R1 and JRA-55 (0.118 ± 0.023 and 0.124 ±
0.018
Cdecade−1, respectively) are slightly underestimated.
The seasonal trends further indicate that trends obtained
from ERA5, CERA-20C, and 20CRv3 are closer to the
observed results than the other reanalysis datasets, while
these are slightly underestimated in NCEP/NCAR R1 and
JRA-55. The autumn and winter trends of CERA-20C are
slightly overestimated.
Figure 11 shows the heat map of the trends of
annual STA obtained from CMST-Interim and re-
analysis datasets in different regions and latitudes from
1958 to 2010. Considering the confidence interval, the
warming trends in the reanalysis data are broadly con-
sistent with the observation. Only CERA-20C and
20CRv3, like CMST-Interim, have significant warming
trends over Australia. The trend over South America of
NCEP/NCAR R1 is also insignificant (as shown in
Table S2). From the perspective of the trend magnitude,
NCEP/NCAR R1 and JRA-55 slightly underestimate the
trends at the latitude zones except for the northern high
latitude. It is noteworthy that the trends of reanalysis
datasets at northern high latitudes are stronger than the
observed warming trend, as reported by Przybylak and
Wyszyn  ski (2020) that reanalyses overestimate Arctic
warming. However, ERA5 (0.361 ± 0.074
Cdecade−1)
and 20CRv3 (0.318 ± 0.075
Cdecade−1) still approach

90°N 90°N 90°N

60°N 60°N 60°N
30°N 30°N 30°N
0 0 0
30°S 30°S 30°S
60°S 60°S 60°S
180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180 180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180 180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180

90°N 90°N 90°N

60°N 60°N 60°N
30°N 30°N 30°N
0 0 0
30°S 30°S 30°S
60°S 60°S 60°S
180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180 180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180 180 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E 180

(Trend: °C·decade−1)

F I G U R E 1 0 The trend of surface temperature anomalies from (a) CMST-Interim, (b) ERA5, (c) NCEP1, (d) CERA-20C, (e) 20CRv3, and
(f) JRA-55 for 1958–2010 (unit:
Cdecade−1). The shade indicates the spatial distribution of significant differences in trends between
reanalysis datasets and CMST-Interim [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
14 YANG ET AL.

T A B L E 2 The trends of annual and seasonal global surface temperature anomalies (north of 60
S) and their uncertainties (at the 95%
confidence interval) from different datasets for 1958–2010 (unit:
Cdecade−1)

Annual MAM JJA SON DJF

CMST-Interim 0.145 ± 0.019 0.151 ± 0.021 0.140 ± 0.019 0.142 ± 0.022 0.143 ± 0.029
ERA5 0.138 ± 0.022 0.143 ± 0.024 0.120 ± 0.022 0.139 ± 0.026 0.142 ± 0.031
NCEP1 0.118 ± 0.023 0.131 ± 0.025 0.115 ± 0.023 0.113 ± 0.028 0.100 ± 0.033
CERA-20C 0.143 ± 0.024 0.137 ± 0.024 0.120 ± 0.025 0.149 ± 0.027 0.154 ± 0.031
20CRv3 0.136 ± 0.020 0.132 ± 0.023 0.118 ± 0.020 0.148 ± 0.023 0.137 ± 0.029
JRA-55 0.124 ± 0.019 0.131 ± 0.021 0.106 ± 0.019 0.120 ± 0.022 0.126 ± 0.029

0.5 F I G U R E 1 1 Heat map for

JRA-55 the trends of surface temperature
0.45
anomalies from 1958 to 2010 in
0.4 seven regions and at different
20CRv3
0.35 latitudes in five reanalysis

(Trend: °C·decade−1)
datasets and CMST-Interim
0.3
CERA-20C (unit:
Cdecade−1) [Colour figure
0.25 can be viewed at
NCEP1 wileyonlinelibrary.com]
0.2

0.15
ERA5
0.1

0.05
CMST-Interim
0

sia a
ric eric
a pe rica ralia d) H H H H H
A Af u ro e s t ( l an de N de N de N de S de S
A m E A m u t i c t u t u t u i t u i t u
A c ti ti ti t t
uth rth Ar La La La La La
So No o w
M id- igh- ow Mid-
L H L

the observed (0.290 ± 0.051
Cdecade−1), while CERA- a benchmark for ranking comparisons. As far as the first
20C (0.383 ± 0.067
Cdecade−1), JRA-55 (0.393 ± 0.077
C 10 of the warmest and coldest years are concerned, these
decade−1), and NCEP/NCAR R1 (0.400 ± 0.083
C extreme years are well represented in each reanalysis
decade−1) are stronger relative to the observation. As the dataset. At least 8 years are consistent with observation,
surface temperatures over sea ice at northern high latitudes although the sequences are not completely matched.
are set to a fixed value of −1.8
C in CMST-Interim, which ERA5 is able to capture all coldest years revealed in the
may account for an underestimation of the warming trend observational average, while 20CRv3 could reproduce
in the Arctic. However, from the global average (Table 2), 10 warmest years. In terms of the first 3 years, CERA-20C
this underestimation is not significant and requires further successfully reproduces the first three warmest years as
analysis. in averaged observations, but in a different order from
that detected by the observational average. ERA5,
NCEP/NCAR R1, and 20CRv3 can also capture the first
3.4 | The consistency of the years of two warmest years, and JRA-55 only captures the
extreme temperature warmest year.
In the warmest year ranking, the same years as the
Table 3 shows the rankings of temperature anomaly in observed ranking from reanalysis datasets are 2 (JRA-55),
the 10 warmest and 10 coldest years in 5 reanalysis 4 (NCEP/NCAR R1), 4 (20CRv3), 5 (ERA5), and
datasets from 1958 to 2010. To make ranking results 5 (CERA-20C). The total number of the recreated warm-
more reliable, the average of annual surface temperature est years is 8, 9, 10, 9, and 9. Furthermore, the ranking
anomalies from three observation data is calculated from scores of five reanalysis data are 87 (JRA-55), 91 (NCEP/
CMST-Interim, HadCRUT5, and NOAAGlobalTemp5, as NCAR R1), 92 (CERA-20C), 92 (20CRv3), and 94 (ERA5).
 YANG ET AL.

TABLE 3 The ranking of the warmest and coldest year in the observation and five reanalysis datasets for the period of 1958–2010

Ten warmest years Ten coldest years

Average ERA5 NCEP1 CERA-20C 20CRv3 JRA-55 Average ERA5 NCEP1 CERA-20C 20CRv3 JRA-55
1 2010 2010** 2010** 2010** 2010** 2010** 1964 1976 1964** 1976 1964** 1964**
2 2005 2005** 2005** 2005** 2005** 1998 1971 1964* 1976 1974* 1965 1976
3 2006 1998 2007 2006** 2007 2005* 1974 1971* 1965* 1964 1976 1974**
4 2009 2006* 2006* 2007 2006* 2006* 1965 1974* 1971 1971 1974* 1971
5 1998 2009* 2009* 1998** 2009* 2009* 1976 1975 1974 1975 1971 1965*
6 2007 2007** 1998* 2009 1998* 2007** 1968 1965 1975 1968** 1966* 1968**
7 2003 2003** 2003** 2002* 2002* 2002* 1966 1968* 1966** 1965 1967* 1967*
8 2002 2002** 2002** 2003* 2003* 2003* 1967 1972 1963 1967** 1960 1966*
9 2001 2004* 2008 2008 2001** 1995 1975 1966 1968 1972* 1968 1975**
10 2004 2008* 2001* 2004** 2004** 1997 1972 1967 1962 1970* 1975* 1962
Total number 9 9 9 10 8 10 8 9 9 9
Score 94 91 92 92 87 80 73 82 82 87

Note: Average indicates the ranking of the average temperature from three observations (CMST-Interim, HadCRUT5, and NOAAGlobalTemp5); total number stands for the number of reanalysis ranking years
consistent with the first 10 extreme ranking years from the average; score represents the ranking score of reanalysis datasets. (**) indicates that the order of ranked year from reanalysis datasets is consistent with that
from the average, (*) represents that the order of the ranked year from reanalysis datasets is one place away from that of the average.
15
16
It can be seen that the order of the year of extremely high
temperature by ERA5 is more consistent with observa-
tion. As discussed by Simmons et al. (2017) that the
reanalyses are quite different from the observational cli-
matological datasets in the magnitude estimates of indi-
vidual warm and cold spells, it is related to very small
but nonignorable differences from air temperature over
sea and SST, and it also affects the ranking of the set of
warmest years. Although the comparison here is based
on the ranking scores about the consistency of years,
rather than the value of STA itself, the very similar scores
indicate that the reanalyses are good representative in
warmest calendar years. While for the coldest years,
except ERA5 and CERA-20C, the other three reanalysis
data can reproduce the first year. Only JRA-55 agrees
with the third coldest year of the observational average.
Additionally, ERA5 can reproduce the same 10 years as
the observed result but in a different order, CERA-20C,
20CRv3, and JRA-55 reproduce 9 years, and NCEP/
NCAR R1 is 8 years. The ranking scores are 73 (NCEP/
NCAR R1), 80 (ERA5), 82 (CERA-20C), 82 (20CRv3), and
87 (JRA-55), respectively, which indicates that JRA-55 is
slightly better than other reanalysis datasets in the repro-
duction of year of extremely low temperature.
4 | DISCUSSION AND
C O N C L U S IO N
The agreement of reanalysis air temperatures from
ERA5, NCEP/NCAR R1, CERA-20C, 20CRv3, and JRA-
55 with newly released global surface temperature anom-
aly dataset CMST-Interim is evaluated from many
aspects, including spatiotemporal variations of biases,
error estimation, long-term trend analysis, and the repre-
sentation of the occurrence of extreme annual tempera-
ture. Results indicate that all five reanalysis data are in
good agreement with CMST-Interim in the above aspects,
where ERA5 and 20CRv3 are generally more consistent
than the other reanalysis data. It is worth noting that
these two reanalysis datasets represent two different
schemes of data assimilation, the “full-input” (surface
and upper-air conventional and satellite data) 4D-Var
and the “surface-input” (surface data only) ensemble
Kalman filter (EnKF) approach, respectively. From the
comparison to the observations (represented by CMST-
Interim), it seems to indicate that there may be no signifi-
cant difference in the representative of the reanalysis
from the perspective of long-term surface temperature
change, with or without assimilation of satellite informa-
tion. While ERA5 could better reproduce the observed
ordering of global surface temperature changes, which
may be related to the fact that it assimilates as much of
YANG ET AL.
the observations as possible. As another climate
reanalysis data to span more than 100 years, although
the seasonal biases (errors) are slightly larger than that of
the previous two, CERA-20C also performs well, espe-
cially in long-term variability and the warming trend. It
indicates that the performance of 4D-Var and EnKF tech-
nologies seems to be comparable when a reanalysis
assimilates only “surface-input”, as stated by Whitaker
et al. (2009). Although NCEP/NCAR R1, released in
1995, is produced using a modified 1995 version of the
NCEP forecast model with 3D-FGAT (first guess at the
appropriate time) as data assimilation, the results of the
representative of the warmest years are still relatively
consistent with the observations. The warmest years
occurred in the late 20th or early 21st century, and the
data assimilation is also large in this period. Although
the anomalies of NCEP/NCAR R1 are lower than obser-
vations since 1990, the rank of the warmest years is con-
sistent well. Moreover, JRA-55 could reproduce most of
the coldest years that match or differ one place from
observed ranking results but perform poorly in the warm-
est years. The results show that JRA-55 has good agree-
ment with observation in the coldest years that appear
around the 1970s, during which there are relatively fewer
assimilation data. On the contrary, JRA-55 also has sys-
tematic negative biases similar to that of NCEP/NCAR
R1 after 1990 when more data are assimilated. It is likely
due to the STA calculated based on the period 1961–1990
during which there are fewer assimilated observations.
Global trends and interannual variation in surface
temperature anomalies from different reanalyses are gen-
erally consistent with the CMST-Interim since 1958, and
the same is true for 20CRv3 and CREA-20C from 1901
onwards. However, there are still significant regional dif-
ferences between reanalyses and the observation. It partly
lies in the lack of regional observations at some periods,
which may lead to regional blemishes in the reanalyses.
For example, as described by Simmons et al. (2021) that
observations over Asia, South America, and Africa are
insufficient in ERA5's input database from 1950 to 1957;
observations on islands and the coast are not used in the
screen-level analysis of JRA-55, which may cause the dif-
ference in those areas where are affected by the observa-
tions in coastal waters (Kobayshi et al., 2015). Another
source of differences between observed data and
reanalyses is the difference in SST and marine air tem-
perature (Simmons et al., 2017, 2021; Bell et al., 2021).
The observations provide a combination of land surface
air temperature and SST, while the reanalyses present air
temperature everywhere. Bell et al. (2021) pointed that
ERA5 has by a small margin the highest temperatures
relative to 1981–2010 for the latest years partly due to
this, and the trend would be smaller if SST is used in
YANG ET AL.
reanalyses (Simmons et al., 2017). In addition, as been
discussed in previous studies, the coverage of observa-
tions in the Antarctic and Arctic regions is incomplete, so
the sources of surface temperature uncertainties in high-
latitude areas are mainly from coverage bias or the bias
from the treatment of temperature at the sea ice bound-
ary (Cowtan and Way, 2014; Cowtan et al., 2015; Morice
et al., 2021; Osborn et al., 2021), this may be the cause of
the large deviation at high latitudes between the observa-
tion and reanalyses. It should be pointed out that there
are also some problems about uncertainties at high lati-
tudes in the CMST-Interim. For example, the tempera-
ture in the Arctic sea ice covered area is set to −1.8
C
(regarded as the default value in the calculation), and it
can be seen that the biases (errors) are large in the north-
ern high latitudes. And due to the scarcity of observation
data, the interannual variability of reconstructed data
near Antarctica is significantly reduced, so it is not
involved in the previous comparisons and needs further
refinement in the future. The reconstruction of CMST-
Interim on the sea ice cover and unobserved areas near
the poles needs to be further improved. Therefore, these
are only preliminary comparisons of surface air tempera-
ture reanalysis datasets, and it is hoped that the results of
this comparison could provide a better understanding of
the differences among these data and a reference for the
appliance of surface air temperature reanalysis datasets.
ACK NO WLE DGE MEN TS
This study was supported by the National Key R&D Pro-
gram of China (Grant Nos. 2017YFC1502301 and
2018YFC1507705) and the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant No. 41975105). The authors
are thankful to ECMWF, JMA, NCEP, and NCAR for
providing ERA5, CERA-20C, JRA-55, NCEP/NCAR R1,
and 20th Century Reanalysis V3 datasets for this study.
ERA5 and CERA-20C data can be obtained from the
link https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/ and https://apps.
ecmwf.int/datasets/, respectively. NCEP/NCAR R1
Reanalysis data and NOAA-CIRES-DOE 20th Century
Reanalysis V3 data can be obtained from https://psl.
noaa.gov/data/gridded/. The JRA-55 data are obtained
from the link https://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds628.1/.
CMST-Interim dataset is available from http://www.
gwpu.net/h-col-103.html. Except that CERA-20C is used
the version available in September 2021, other datasets
are used the version available in November 2020.
A U T H O R C ON T R I B U T I O NS
Yang Yang: Data curation; formal analysis; software;
writing – original draft; writing – review and editing.
Qingxiang Li: Conceptualization; writing – original
draft; writing – review and editing. Zhaoyang Song:
17
Writing – review and editing. Wenbin Sun: Data
curation. Wenjie Dong: Writing – review and editing.
ORCID
Yang Yang https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8143-3865
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SU PP O R TI N G I N F O RMA TI O N
Additional supporting information may be found in the
online version of the article at the publisher's website.
How to cite this article: Yang, Y., Li, Q., Song,
Z., Sun, W., & Dong, W. (2022). A comparison of
global surface temperature variability, extremes
and warming trend using reanalysis datasets and
CMST-Interim. International Journal of
Climatology, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.7551