Air flow influences on local climate: observed and simulated mean relationships for the United Kingdom

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Abstract
Synoptic-scale air flow variability over the United Kingdom is measured on a daily time scale by following previous work to define 3 indices: geostrophic flow strength, vorticity and direction. Comparing the observed distribution of air flow index values with those determined from a simulation with the Hadley Centre's global climate model (HadCM2) identifies some minor systematic biases in the model's synoptic circulation but demonstrates that the major features are well simulated. The rela- tionship between temperature and precipitation from parts of the United Kingdom and these air flow indices (either singly or in pairs) is found to be very similar in both the observations and model output; indeed the simulated and observed precipitation relationships are found to be almost interchangeable in a quantitative sense. These encouraging results imply that some reliability can be assumed for sin- gle grid-box and regional output from this climate model; this applies only to those grid boxes evalu- ated here (which do not have high or complex orography), only to the portion of variability that is con- trolled by synoptic air flow variations, and only to those surface variables considered here (temperature and precipitation).

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