Final Report for Cloud-Aerosol Physics in Super-Parameterized Atmospheric Regional Climate Simulations (CAP-SPARCS)(DE-SC0002003) for 8/15/2009 through 8/14/2012
Improving the representation of local and non-local aerosol interactions in state-of-the-science regional climate models is a priority for the coming decade (Zhang, 2008). With this aim in mind, we have combined two new technologies that have a useful synergy: (1) an aerosol-enabled regional climate model (Advanced Weather Research and Forecasting Model with Chemistry WRF-Chem), whose primary weakness is a lack of high quality boundary conditions and (2) an aerosol-enabled multiscale modeling framework (PNNL Multiscale Aerosol Climate Model (MACM)), which is global but captures aerosol-convection-cloud feedbacks, and thus an ideal source of boundary conditions. Combining these two approaches has resulted in an aerosol-enabled modeling framework that not only resolves high resolution details in a particular region, but crucially does so within a global context that is similarly faithful to multi-scale aerosol-climate interactions. We have applied and improved the representation of aerosol interactions by evaluating model performance over multiple domains, with (1) an extensive evaluation of mid-continent precipitation representation by multiscale modeling, (2) two focused comparisons to transport of aerosol plumes to the eastern United States for comparison with observations made as part of the International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transformation (ICARTT), with the first being idealized and the second being linked to an extensive wildfire plume, and (3) the extension of these ideas to the development of a new approach to evaluating aerosol indirect effects with limited-duration model runs by nudging to observations. This research supported the work of one postdoc (Zhan Zhao) for two years and contributed to the training and research of two graduate students. Four peer-reviewed publications have resulted from this work, and ground work for a follow-on project was completed.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0002003
- OSTI ID:
- 1054153
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/SC0002003-1
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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