Simulations of greenhouse trace gases using the Los Alamos chemical tracer model
- Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
- Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, CA (United States)
Through three-dimensional global model studies on atmospheric composition and transport, we are improving our quantitative understanding of the origins and behavior of trace gases that affect Earth's radiative energy balance and climate. We will focus, in this paper, on the simulations of three individual trace gases including CFC-11, methyl chloroform, and methane. We first used our chemical tracer model to study the global distribution and trend of chemically inert CFC-11 observed by the Atmospheric Lifetime Experiment. The results show that the model has the ability to reproduce the time-series of the observations. The purpose of this CFC-11 simulation was to test the transport of the model. We then used to model introduce methyl chloroform into the atmosphere according to the known emission patterns and iteratively varied OH fields so that the observed concentrations of methyl chloroform from the observations could be simulated well. The rationale behind this approach is that the reaction with OH is the dominant sink for metyl chloroform and the transport of the model has been tested in the previous CFC-11 study. Finally, using the inferred OH distributions, we conducted a steady-state simulation to reproduce the current methane distribution. The general agreement between the modeled an observed methane surface concentrations has laid a foundation for the simulation of the transient increase of methane.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE; USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-36
- OSTI ID:
- 5885650
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-91-4049; CONF-9110127-2; ON: DE92005055
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Conference on global climate change: its mitigation through improved production and utilization of energy, Los Alamos, NM (United States), 21-24 Oct 1991
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS//MATHEMATICS, COMPUTING, AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
58 GEOSCIENCES
ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY
SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION
GREENHOUSE GASES
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
TRANSPORT
ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION
CHLORINATED ALIPHATIC HYDROCARBONS
CHLOROFORM
CLIMATE MODELS
CLIMATIC CHANGE
GENERAL CIRCULATION MODELS
METHANE
STRATOSPHERE
TRACE AMOUNTS
TRACER TECHNIQUES
TROPOSPHERE
ALKANES
CHEMISTRY
DISTRIBUTION
EARTH ATMOSPHERE
HALOGENATED ALIPHATIC HYDROCARBONS
HYDROCARBONS
ISOTOPE APPLICATIONS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
ORGANIC CHLORINE COMPOUNDS
ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
ORGANIC HALOGEN COMPOUNDS
SIMULATION
540120* - Environment
Atmospheric- Chemicals Monitoring & Transport- (1990-)
990200 - Mathematics & Computers
580000 - Geosciences