| 1. |
- Mann, G. W., et al.
(författare)
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Intercomparison and evaluation of global aerosol microphysical properties among AeroCom models of a range of complexity
- 2014
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Ingår i: Atmospheric Chemistry And Physics. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1680-7316 .- 1680-7324. ; 14:9, s. 4679-4713
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Many of the next generation of global climate models will include aerosol schemes which explicitly simulate the microphysical processes that determine the particle size distribution. These models enable aerosol optical properties and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) concentrations to be determined by fundamental aerosol processes, which should lead to a more physically based simulation of aerosol direct and indirect radiative forcings. This study examines the global variation in particle size distribution simulated by 12 global aerosol microphysics models to quantify model diversity and to identify any common biases against observations. Evaluation against size distribution measurements from a new European network of aerosol supersites shows that the mean model agrees quite well with the observations at many sites on the annual mean, but there are some seasonal biases common to many sites. In particular, at many of these European sites, the accumulation mode number concentration is biased low during winter and Aitken mode concentrations tend to be overestimated in winter and underestimated in summer. At high northern latitudes, the models strongly underpredict Aitken and accumulation particle concentrations compared to the measurements, consistent with previous studies that have highlighted the poor performance of global aerosol models in the Arctic. In the marine boundary layer, the models capture the observed meridional variation in the size distribution, which is dominated by the Aitken mode at high latitudes, with an increasing concentration of accumulation particles with decreasing latitude. Considering vertical profiles, the models reproduce the observed peak in total particle concentrations in the upper troposphere due to new particle formation, although modelled peak concentrations tend to be biased high over Europe. Overall, the multimodel-mean data set simulates the global variation of the particle size distribution with a good degree of skill, suggesting that most of the individual global aerosol microphysics models are performing well, although the large model diversity indicates that some models are in poor agreement with the observations. Further work is required to better constrain size-resolved primary and secondary particle number sources, and an improved understanding of nucleation and growth (e. g. the role of nitrate and secondary organics) will improve the fidelity of simulated particle size distributions.
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| 2. |
- Liu, X., et al.
(författare)
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Toward a minimal representation of aerosols in climate models : description and evaluation in the Community Atmosphere Model CAM5
- 2012
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Ingår i: Geoscientific Model Development. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1991-959X .- 1991-9603. ; 5:3, s. 709-739
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A modal aerosol module (MAM) has been developed for the Community Atmosphere Model version 5 (CAM5), the atmospheric component of the Community Earth System Model version 1 (CESM1). MAM is capable of simulating the aerosol size distribution and both internal and external mixing between aerosol components, treating numerous complicated aerosol processes and aerosol physical, chemical and optical properties in a physically-based manner. Two MAM versions were developed: a more complete version with seven lognormal modes (MAM7), and a version with three lognormal modes (MAM3) for the purpose of long-term (decades to centuries) simulations. In this paper a description and evaluation of the aerosol module and its two representations are provided. Sensitivity of the aerosol lifecycle to simplifications in the representation of aerosol is discussed. Simulated sulfate and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) mass concentrations are remarkably similar between MAM3 and MAM7. Differences in primary organic matter (POM) and black carbon (BC) concentrations between MAM3 and MAM7 are also small (mostly within 10 %). The mineral dust global burden differs by 10 % and sea salt burden by 30-40 % between MAM3 and MAM7, mainly due to the different size ranges for dust and sea salt modes and different standard deviations of the log-normal size distribution for sea salt modes between MAM3 and MAM7. The model is able to qualitatively capture the observed geographical and temporal variations of aerosol mass and number concentrations, size distributions, and aerosol optical properties. However, there are noticeable biases; e.g., simulated BC concentrations are significantly lower than measurements in the Arctic. There is a low bias in modeled aerosol optical depth on the global scale, especially in the developing countries. These biases in aerosol simulations clearly indicate the need for improvements of aerosol processes (e.g., emission fluxes of anthropogenic aerosols and precursor gases in developing countries, boundary layer nucleation) and properties (e.g., primary aerosol emission size, POM hygroscopicity). In addition, the critical role of cloud properties (e. g., liquid water content, cloud fraction) responsible for the wet scavenging of aerosol is highlighted.
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