Climatology of the diurnal tides from eCMAM30 (1979 to 2010) and its comparison with SABER

The extended Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model (eCMAM) was recently run in a nudged mode using reanalysis data from the ground to 1 hPa for the period of January 1979 to June 2010 (hence the name eCMAM30). In this paper, eCMAM30 temperature is used to examine the background mean temperature, the spectrum of the diurnal tides, and the climatology of the migrating diurnal tide Dw1 and three nonmigrating diurnal tides De3, Dw2, and Ds0 in the stratosphere, mesosphere, and lower thermosphere. The model results are then compared to the diurnal tidal climatology derived from Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) observations between 40 to 110 km and 50 degrees S to 50 degrees N from January 2002 to December 2013. The model reproduces the latitudinal background mean temperature gradients well except that the cold mesopause temperature in eCMAM30 is 10 to 20 K colder than SABER. The diurnal tidal spectra and their relative strengths compare very well between eCMAM30 and SABER. The altitude-latitude structures for the four diurnal tidal components (Dw1, De3, Dw2, and Ds0) from the two datasets are also in very good agreement even for structures in the stratosphere with a weaker amplitude. The largest discrepancy between the model and SABER is associated with the seasonal variation of De3. In addition to the Northern Hemisphere (NH) summer maximum, a secondary maximum occurs during NH winter (December-February) in the model but is absent in SABER. The seasonal variations of the other three diurnal tidal components are in good agreement. Interannual time series of Dw1 and De3 from both eCMAM30 and SABER reveal variability with a period of 25 to 26 months, which indicates the modulation of the diurnal tides by the stratospheric quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO).