Search Menu
DOE PAGES title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information
Search Scholarly Publications

Title: Impacts of spatial heterogeneity of anthropogenic aerosol emissions in a regionally refined global aerosol–climate model

Journal Article · · Geoscientific Model Development (Online)
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1];  [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]
  1. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Emissions of anthropogenic aerosol and their precursors are often prescribed in global aerosol models. Most of these emissions are spatially heterogeneous at model grid scales. When remapped from low-resolution data, the spatial heterogeneity in emissions can be lost, leading to large errors in the simulation. It can also cause the conservation problem if non-conservative remapping is used. The default anthropogenic emission treatment in the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) is subject to both problems. In this study, we introduce a revised emission treatment for the E3SM Atmosphere Model (EAM) that ensures conservation of mass fluxes and preserves the original emission heterogeneity at the model-resolved grid scale. We assess the error estimates associated with the default emission treatment and the impact of improved heterogeneity and mass conservation in both globally uniform standard-resolution (~ 165 km) and regionally refined high-resolution (~ 42 km) simulations. The default treatment incurs significant errors near the surface, particularly over sharp emission gradient zones. Much larger errors are observed in high-resolution simulations. It substantially underestimates the aerosol burden, surface concentration, and aerosol sources over highly polluted regions, while it overestimates these quantities over less-polluted adjacent areas. Large errors can persist at higher elevation for daily mean estimates, which can affect aerosol extinction profiles and aerosol optical depth (AOD). We find that the revised treatment significantly improves the accuracy of the aerosol emissions from surface and elevated sources near sharp spatial gradient regions, with significant improvement in the spatial heterogeneity and variability of simulated surface concentration in high-resolution simulations. In the next-generation E3SM running at convection-permitting scales where the resolved spatial heterogeneity is significantly increased, the revised emission treatment is expected to better represent the aerosol emissions as well as their lifecycle and impacts on climate.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC); Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Scientific User Facilities (SUF); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
2345245
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA--185364
Journal Information:
Geoscientific Model Development (Online), Journal Name: Geoscientific Model Development (Online) Journal Issue: 8 Vol. 17; ISSN 1991-9603
Publisher:
Copernicus Publications, EGUCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (53)

Spatial Representativeness Error in the Ground-Level Observation Networks for Black Carbon Radiation Absorption journal February 2018
The DOE E3SM Model Version 2: Overview of the physical model preprint April 2022
Analysis of daily, monthly, and annual burned area using the fourth-generation global fire emissions database (GFED4): ANALYSIS OF BURNED AREA journal March 2013
The ERA5 global reanalysis journal June 2020
AERONET—A Federated Instrument Network and Data Archive for Aerosol Characterization journal October 1998
Analysis of self-describing gridded geoscience data with netCDF Operators (NCO) journal October 2008
A compatible and conservative spectral element method on unstructured grids journal August 2010
Sulfur chemistry in the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Climate Model: Description, evaluation, features, and sensitivity to aqueous chemistry journal January 2000
A description of the global sulfur cycle and its controlling processes in the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Climate Model, Version 3 journal January 2000
Mineral Dust Entrainment and Deposition (DEAD) model: Description and 1990s dust climatology journal January 2003
Spatial and monthly trends in speciated fine particle concentration in the United States: SPECIATED FINE PARTICLE CONCENTRATION journal February 2004
Historical emissions of black and organic carbon aerosol from energy-related combustion, 1850-2000: HISTORICAL BC/OC EMISSIONS journal May 2007
Exploring a Variable‐Resolution Approach for Simulating Regional Climate Over the Tibetan Plateau Using VR‐CESM journal April 2019
The DOE E3SM Coupled Model Version 1: Overview and Evaluation at Standard Resolution journal July 2019
PM 2.5 Pollution Modulates Wintertime Urban Heat Island Intensity in the Beijing‐Tianjin‐Hebei Megalopolis, China journal January 2020
An Overview of the Atmospheric Component of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model journal August 2019
Impact of Nudging Strategy on the Climate Representativeness and Hindcast Skill of Constrained EAMv1 Simulations journal December 2019
Aerosols in the E3SM Version 1: New Developments and Their Impacts on Radiative Forcing journal January 2020
The DOE E3SM Coupled Model Version 1: Description and Results at High Resolution journal December 2019
Separating Physics and Dynamics Grids for Improved Computational Efficiency in Spectral Element Earth System Models journal June 2021
Evaluating the Impact of Chemical Complexity and Horizontal Resolution on Tropospheric Ozone Over the Conterminous US With a Global Variable Resolution Chemistry Model journal June 2022
Lightning as a major driver of recent large fire years in North American boreal forests journal June 2017
Urban heat island impacted by fine particles in Nanjing, China journal September 2017
Exposure to ambient black carbon derived from a unique inventory and high-resolution model journal January 2014
An Assessment of Surface and Atmospheric Conditions Associated with the Extreme 2014 Wildfire Season in Canada’s Northwest Territories journal January 2019
Flood or Drought: How Do Aerosols Affect Precipitation? journal September 2008
First- and Second-Order Conservative Remapping Schemes for Grids in Spherical Coordinates journal September 1999
The Multi-Scale Infrastructure for Chemistry and Aerosols (MUSICA) journal October 2020
Urban Aerosol Impacts on Downwind Convective Storms journal June 2007
Arbitrary-Order Conservative and Consistent Remapping and a Theory of Linear Maps: Part I journal June 2015
Arbitrary-Order Conservative and Consistent Remapping and a Theory of Linear Maps: Part II journal April 2016
CAM-SE: A scalable spectral element dynamical core for the Community Atmosphere Model journal November 2011
The global aerosol-climate model ECHAM-HAM, version 2: sensitivity to improvements in process representations journal January 2012
Technical Note: Estimating aerosol effects on cloud radiative forcing journal January 2013
Technical Note: On the use of nudging for aerosol–climate model intercomparison studies journal January 2014
Impacts of absorbing aerosol deposition on snowpack and hydrologic cycle in the Rocky Mountain region based on variable-resolution CESM (VR-CESM) simulations journal January 2018
The mechanisms and seasonal differences of the impact of aerosols on daytime surface urban heat island effect journal June 2020
Effective radiative forcing and adjustments in CMIP6 models journal January 2020
OCEANFILMS (Organic Compounds from Ecosystems to Aerosols: Natural Films and Interfaces via Langmuir Molecular Surfactants) sea spray organic aerosol emissions – implementation in a global climate model and impacts on clouds journal January 2022
Effective radiative forcing of anthropogenic aerosols in E3SM version 1: historical changes, causality, decomposition, and parameterization sensitivities journal July 2022
Analysis and quantification of the diversities of aerosol life cycles within AeroCom journal January 2006
Emissions of primary aerosol and precursor gases in the years 2000 and 1750 prescribed data-sets for AeroCom journal January 2006
Evaluation of black carbon estimations in global aerosol models journal January 2009
A global anthropogenic emission inventory of atmospheric pollutants from sector- and fuel-specific sources (1970–2017): an application of the Community Emissions Data System (CEDS) journal January 2020
Historic global biomass burning emissions for CMIP6 (BB4CMIP) based on merging satellite observations with proxies and fire models (1750–2015) journal January 2017
Historical (1750–2014) anthropogenic emissions of reactive gases and aerosols from the Community Emissions Data System (CEDS) journal January 2018
Further improvement and evaluation of nudging in the E3SM Atmosphere Model version 1 (EAMv1): simulations of the mean climate, weather events, and anthropogenic aerosol effects journal September 2022
The fully coupled regionally refined model of E3SM version 2: overview of the atmosphere, land, and river results journal July 2023
Toward a minimal representation of aerosols in climate models: description and evaluation in the Community Atmosphere Model CAM5 journal January 2012
Sensitivity of remote aerosol distributions to representation of cloud–aerosol interactions in a global climate model journal January 2013
Overview of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) experimental design and organization journal January 2016
Description and evaluation of a new four-mode version of the Modal Aerosol Module (MAM4) within version 5.3 of the Community Atmosphere Model journal January 2016
EAMv2 anthropogenic aerosol emissions data in model-native spectral-element grid dataset January 2023

Similar Records

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES