Estimations of Latent Heating Rate Using ERA5 Reanalysis Data and Comparison With GPM

Abstract Latent heating rate (LHR) is not provided as a standard output in most reanalysis data sets. Although several approaches have been proposed to estimate LHR, these products have not been validated against observations. This study estimates LHR profiles using nine methods, including three from previous studies, using ECMWF Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) and compares them against LHR data obtained from Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) observations over 9 years (June 2014 to May 2023). While all methods capture the spatial distribution of LHR reasonably well, the top three methods, which incorporate a cloud‐region constraint to exclude non‐cloud heating, exhibit the highest spatial pattern correlations with GPM observations. The longitude‐height and longitude‐latitude distributions as well as the temporal variability of LHR derived using top three methods align with GPM observations. Given these validation results, ERA5‐LHR can be a valuable data set providing regionally and temporally continuous depictions of convective activities.