The Role of Circulation Features on Black Carbon Transport into the Arctic in the Community Atmosphere Model Version 5 (CAM5)
Current climate models generally under-predict the surface concentration of black carbon (BC) in the Arctic due to the uncertainties associated with emissions, transport, and removal. This bias is also present in the Community Atmosphere Model Version 5.1 (CAM5). In this study, we investigate the uncertainty of Arctic BC due to transport processes simulated by CAM5 by configuring the model to run in an “offline mode” in which the large-scale circulations are prescribed. We compare the simulated BC transport when the offline model is driven by the meteorology predicted by the standard free-running CAM5 with simulations where the meteorology is constrained to agree with reanalysis products. Some circulation biases are apparent: the free-running CAM5 produces about 50% less transient eddy transport of BC than the reanalysis-driven simulations, which may be attributed to the coarse model resolution insufficient to represent eddies. Our analysis shows that the free-running CAM5 reasonably captures the essence of the Arctic Oscillation (AO), but some discernable differences in the spatial pattern of the AO between the free-running CAM5 and the reanalysis-driven simulations result in significantly different AO modulation of BC transport over Northeast Asia and Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, we find that the overall climatological circulation patterns simulated by the free-running CAM5 generally resembles those from the reanalysis products, and BC transport is very similar in both simulation sets. Therefore, the simulated circulation features regulating the long-range BC transport is unlikely the most important cause of the large under-prediction of surface BC concentration in the Arctic.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 1087809
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-88828; KP1703020
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Geophysical Research. D. (Atmospheres), 118(10):4657-4669, Journal Name: Journal of Geophysical Research. D. (Atmospheres), 118(10):4657-4669
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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