Evaluation of ECMWF water vapour fields by airborne differential absorption lidar measurements: a case study between Brazil and Europe

International audienceThree extended airborne Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) sections of tropospheric water vapour across the tropical and sub-tropical Atlantic in March 2004 are compared to short-term forecasts of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The humidity fields between 28° S and 36° N exhibit large inter air-mass gradients and reflect typical transport patterns of low- and mid-latitudes like convection (e.g. Hadley circulation), subsidence and baroclinic development with stratospheric intrusion. These processes re-distribute water vapour vertically such that locations with extraordinary dry/moist air-masses are observed in the lower/upper troposphere, respectively. The mixing ratios range over 3 orders of magnitude. Back-trajectories are used to trace and characterize the observed air-masses. Overall, the observed water vapour distributions are largely reproduced by the short-term forecasts at 0.25° resolution (T799/L91), the correlation ranges from 0.69 to 0.92. Locally, large differences occur due to comparably small spatial shifts in presence of strong gradients. Systematic deviations are found associated with specific atmospheric domains. The planetary boundary layer in the forecast is too moist and to shallow. Convective transport of humidity to the middle and upper troposphere tends to be overestimated. Potential impacts arising from data assimilation and model physics are considered. The matching of air-mass boundaries (transport) is discussed with repect to scales and the representativity of the 2-D sections for the 3-D humidity field. The normalized bias of the model with respect to the observations is 6%, 11% and 0% (moist model biases) for the three along-flight sections, whereby however the lowest levels are excluded

Genetic association study of QT interval highlights role for calcium signaling pathways in myocardial repolarization.

The QT interval, an electrocardiographic measure reflecting myocardial repolarization, is a heritable trait. QT prolongation is a risk factor for ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death (SCD) and could indicate the presence of the potentially lethal mendelian long-QT syndrome (LQTS). Using a genome-wide association and replication study in up to 100,000 individuals, we identified 35 common variant loci associated with QT interval that collectively explain ∼8-10% of QT-interval variation and highlight the importance of calcium regulation in myocardial repolarization. Rare variant analysis of 6 new QT interval-associated loci in 298 unrelated probands with LQTS identified coding variants not found in controls but of uncertain causality and therefore requiring validation. Several newly identified loci encode proteins that physically interact with other recognized repolarization proteins. Our integration of common variant association, expression and orthogonal protein-protein interaction screens provides new insights into cardiac electrophysiology and identifies new candidate genes for ventricular arrhythmias, LQTS and SCD

Evaluation of ECMWF water vapour analyses by airborne differential absorption lidar measurements: a case study between Brasil and Europe

Airborne Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) observations of tropospheric water vapour over Brazil and between Brazil and south Europe in March 2004 are compared to 1-hourly short-range forecasts of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). On three along-flight sections across the tropical and sub-tropical Atlantic between 28° S and 37° N humidity fields are observed which represent typical low latitude conditions. H2O mixing ratios vary between q≈0.01–0.1 g/kg in the upper troposphere (UT), in subsiding air layers and a stratospheric intrusion. They reach up to 0.5 g/kg at UT levels inside the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and exceed 10 g/kg at lower levels. Back-trajectories reveal that the humidity fields are largely determined by transport. The observed water vapour distributions are properly reproduced by 1-hourly ECMWF Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) short-range forecasts at T799/L91 spectral resolution. As transport largely determines the water vapour fields, the IFS skill is to a large extend based on a good representation of the dynamics. The mean relative bias accounts to few percent (0%, 3% and 6% for the three sections) being about or even below the accuracy of the DIAL measurements of 5%. The larger deviations between analyses and observations on small scales are due to relative spatial shifts of features with large gradients. The correlation is quite high, ranging between 0.71 and 0.88. Over sea the analyses tend to underestimate the PBL height. At mid-levels near deep convection the mid-troposphere tends to be analyzed too humid indicating shortcomings in the convection parameterization. Humid tendencies are also found in the upper troposphere, particularly in tropical regions

Evaluation of ECMWF water vapour fields by airborne differential absorption lidar measurements: a case study between Brazil and Europe

Three extended airborne Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) sections of tropospheric water vapour across the tropical and sub-tropical Atlantic in March 2004 are compared to short-term forecasts of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The humidity fields between 28° S and 36° N exhibit large inter air-mass gradients and reflect typical transport patterns of low- and mid-latitudes like convection (e.g. Hadley circulation), subsidence and baroclinic development with stratospheric intrusion. These processes re-distribute water vapour vertically such that locations with extraordinary dry/moist air-masses are observed in the lower/upper troposphere, respectively. The mixing ratios range over 3 orders of magnitude. Back-trajectories are used to trace and characterize the observed air-masses. <br><br> Overall, the observed water vapour distributions are largely reproduced by the short-term forecasts at 0.25° resolution (T799/L91), the correlation ranges from 0.69 to 0.92. Locally, large differences occur due to comparably small spatial shifts in presence of strong gradients. Systematic deviations are found associated with specific atmospheric domains. The planetary boundary layer in the forecast is too moist and to shallow. Convective transport of humidity to the middle and upper troposphere tends to be overestimated. Potential impacts arising from data assimilation and model physics are considered. The matching of air-mass boundaries (transport) is discussed with repect to scales and the representativity of the 2-D sections for the 3-D humidity field. The normalized bias of the model with respect to the observations is 6%, 11% and 0% (moist model biases) for the three along-flight sections, whereby however the lowest levels are excluded

Plasma HDL cholesterol and risk of myocardial infarction: a mendelian randomisation study

Background: High plasma HDL cholesterol is associated with reduced risk of myocardial infarction, but whether this association is causal is unclear. Exploiting the fact that genotypes are randomly assigned at meiosis, are independent of non-genetic confounding, and are unmodified by disease processes, mendelian randomisation can be used to test the hypothesis that the association of a plasma biomarker with disease is causal. Methods: We performed two mendelian randomisation analyses. First, we used as an instrument a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the endothelial lipase gene (LIPG Asn396Ser) and tested this SNP in 20 studies (20,913 myocardial infarction cases, 95,407 controls). Second, we used as an instrument a genetic score consisting of 14 common SNPs that exclusively associate with HDL cholesterol and tested this score in up to 12,482 cases of myocardial infarction and 41,331 controls. As a positive control, we also tested a genetic score of 13 common SNPs exclusively associated with LDL cholesterol. Findings: Carriers of the LIPG 396Ser allele (2·6% frequency) had higher HDL cholesterol (0·14 mmol/L higher, p=8×10(-13)) but similar levels of other lipid and non-lipid risk factors for myocardial infarction compared with non-carriers. This difference in HDL cholesterol is expected to decrease risk of myocardial infarction by 13% (odds ratio [OR] 0·87, 95% CI 0·84-0·91). However, we noted that the 396Ser allele was not associated with risk of myocardial infarction (OR 0·99, 95% CI 0·88-1·11, p=0·85). From observational epidemiology, an increase of 1 SD in HDL cholesterol was associated with reduced risk of myocardial infarction (OR 0·62, 95% CI 0·58-0·66). However, a 1 SD increase in HDL cholesterol due to genetic score was not associated with risk of myocardial infarction (OR 0·93, 95% CI 0·68-1·26, p=0·63). For LDL cholesterol, the estimate from observational epidemiology (a 1 SD increase in LDL cholesterol associated with OR 1·54, 95% CI 1·45-1·63) was concordant with that from genetic score (OR 2·13, 95% CI 1·69-2·69, p=2×10⁻¹⁰). Interpretation: Some genetic mechanisms that raise plasma HDL cholesterol do not seem to lower risk of myocardial infarction. These data challenge the concept that raising of plasma HDL cholesterol will uniformly translate into reductions in risk of myocardial infarction.Benjamin F Voight ... John Spertus ... et al

Assimilation of GOME total ozone satellite observations in a three-dimensional tracer transport model

A data-assimilation scheme to assimilate the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) total-ozone data is described. The corresponding software (called TM3DAM) has been operational since early 2000 and is used to produce daily ozone analyses and five-day ozone forecasts. The model is a tracer-transport model with a parametrized description of stratospheric gas-phase and heterogeneous ozone chemistry. It is driven by operational meteorological fields from the ECMWF numerical weather-prediction model. TM3DAM analyses near-real-time level-2 ozone data from the GOME instrument on the ESA ERS-2 satellite. The focus of this paper is on the data-assimilation aspects and the analysis results. The assimilation approach is based on the Kalman-filter equations and provides detailed and realistic maps of the forecast error. The analysis scheme is nevertheless computationally efficient. The forecast-minus-observation statistics, accumulated over a two-year period, are described in detail. A comparison with TOMS and Brewer observations shows good agreement. Copyright © 2003 Royal Meteorological Societ