Evaluation of a multi-scale WRF-CAM5 simulation during the 2010 East Asian Summer Monsoon

Journal Article · Fri Sep 08 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Atmospheric Environment (1994)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2017.09.008· OSTI ID:1395287

Campbell, Patrick ^[1]; Zhang, Yang ^[2]; Wang, Kai ^[1]; Leung, Ruby ^[3]; Fan, Jiwen ^[3]; Zheng, Bo ^[4]; Zhang, Qiang ^[5]; He, Kebin ^[6]

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1. North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC (United States). Dept. of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences
2. North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC (United States). Dept. of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences; Collaborative Innovation Center for Regional Environmental Quality, Beijing (China)
3. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States). Atmospheric Sciences and Global Change Division
4. Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China). State Key Joint Lab. of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment
5. Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China). Ministry of Education Key Lab. for Earth System Modeling, Center for Earth System Science
6. Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China). State Key Joint Lab. of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment; Collaborative Innovation Center for Regional Environmental Quality, Beijing (China

The Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) with the physics package of the Community Atmosphere Model Version 5 (CAM5) has been applied at multiple scales over Eastern China (EC) and the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) to evaluate how increased horizontal resolution with physics designed for a coarser resolution climate model impacts aerosols and clouds, and the resulting precipitation characteristics and performance during the 2010 East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM). Despite large underpredictions in surface aerosol concentrations and aerosol optical depth, there is good spatial agreement with surface observations of chemical predictions, and increasing spatial resolution tends to improve performance. Model bias and normalized root mean square values for precipitation predictions are relatively small, but there are significant differences when comparing modeled and observed probability density functions for precipitation in EC and YRD. Increasing model horizontal resolution tends to reduce model bias and error for precipitation predictions. The surface and column aerosol loading is maximized between about 32°N and 42°N in early to mid-May during the 2010 EASM, and then shifts north while decreasing in magnitude during July and August. Changing model resolution moderately changes the spatiotemporal relationships between aerosols, cloud properties, and precipitation during the EASM, thus demonstrating the importance of model grid resolution in simulating EASM circulation and rainfall patterns over EC and the YRD. In conclusion, results from this work demonstrate the capability and limitations in the aerosol, cloud, and precipitation representation of WRF-CAM5 for regional-scale applications down to relatively fine horizontal resolutions. Further WRF-CAM5 model development and application in this area is needed.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830; SC0006695
• OSTI ID: 1395287
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1406675; OSTI ID: 1495881
• Journal Information: Atmospheric Environment (1994), Journal Name: Atmospheric Environment (1994) Journal Issue: C Vol. 169; ISSN 1352-2310
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
East Asian Summer Monsoon
Evaluation
Multiple nested
Online-coupled
WRF-CAM5