Articles | Volume 19, issue 10
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-4525-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-4525-2025
Brief communication
 | 
14 Oct 2025
Brief communication |  | 14 Oct 2025

Brief communication: Reanalyses underperform in cold regions, raising concerns for climate services and research

Bin Cao and Stephan Gruber

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Cited articles

Baatz, R., Hendricks Franssen, H. J., Euskirchen, E., Sihi, D., Dietze, M., Ciavatta, S., Fennel, K., Beck, H., De Lannoy, G., Pauwels, V. R. N., Raiho, A., Montzka, C., Williams, M., Mishra, U., Poppe, C., Zacharias, S., Lausch, A., Samaniego, L., Van Looy, K., Bogena, H., Adamescu, M., Mirtl, M., Fox, A., Goergen, K., Naz, B. S., Zeng, Y., and Vereecken, H.: Reanalysis in Earth System Science: Toward Terrestrial Ecosystem Reanalysis, Reviews of Geophysics, 59, 1–39, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020RG000715, 2021. a
Cao, B. and Gruber, S.: Reduced performance of reanalyses in cold regions, Zenodo [data set], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14216654, 2024. a
Cao, B., Gruber, S., and Zhang, T.: REDCAPP (v1.0): parameterizing valley inversions in air temperature data downscaled from reanalyses, Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 2905–2923, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-2905-2017, 2017. a
Cao, B., Zhang, T., Wu, Q., Sheng, Y., Zhao, L., and Zou, D.: Permafrost zonation index map and statistics over the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau based on field evidence, Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, 30, 178–194, https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp.2006, 2019. a
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Short summary
The climate-driven changes in cold regions have an outsized importance for local resilient communities and for global climate through teleconnections. We show that reanalyses are less accurate in cold regions compared to other more populated regions, coincident with the low density of observations. Our findings likely point to similar gaps in our knowledge and capabilities of climate research and services in cold regions.
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